


depending how you feel about baseball

by theundiagnosable



Series: not baseball [2]
Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: M/M, Memory Loss, but like the inaccurate corny plot device kind, ft. vinyl and civic responsibility and tacos, i still Don't Go Here shut up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-25
Updated: 2019-11-25
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:33:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 31,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21551530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theundiagnosable/pseuds/theundiagnosable
Summary: It’s possible, in retrospect, for Kyle to divide his life into periods of relative calm between concussive head traumas, which is maybe grim but mostly just practical. Mostly just hockey.
Relationships: Kyle Dubas/William Nylander
Series: not baseball [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1669720
Comments: 166
Kudos: 523





	depending how you feel about baseball

**Author's Note:**

> fellas,,, i did not plan on writing a novella about this particular romantic dramedy trope and certainly not for this pairing but it happened anyways. the title is a modified quote from moneyball. i'm mad about it. but the gm is hot now so this where we are and you’re all in this with me.

It’s the most bizarre photo op of Kyle’s life, bar none.

Even arranging it is an ordeal. Kyle’s doctors are deeply unenthused by Maple Leafs PR and half of the team’s ownership making themselves at home in his hospital room, and Kyle is painfully conscious of how he looks with stitches across his forehead and hair that hasn’t been combed since he woke up, next to the Leafs people in their suits and ties. He negotiated his way to a t-shirt and pajama pants for the picture, which are a step up from his hospital gown, but not a big one. He misses his glasses.

His sister seems intent on babying him like one small bus-related accident means Kyle’s gone from capable older brother to complete invalid. Megan planted herself at the foot of his bed when she arrived and has refused to move since, up to and including threatening flying down the other girls and Gramma if Kyle didn’t take it slow. She, at least, hasn’t changed.

That’s just about the only thing that hasn’t.

“How am I, as a GM? Results-wise, I mean?” Kyle asks Brendan Shanahan, who is sitting in the chair next to Kyle’s bed, because he’s apparently Kyle’s friend and boss, because Kyle is, apparently, the general manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs.

He’s apparently missed a lot, in the six years missing from his memory.

Kyle didn’t believe the doctors when they told him. Not just- conceptually, of course, the concept of forgetting years of his life is completely ridiculous, but it was more that Kyle didn’t _feel_ like anything was missing. Still doesn’t. There are no gaps, no blurry memories lurking at the edges of his subconscious like a contrived plot device in a movie. He knows who he is and when he is with as much certainty as he ever has, and it takes them googling today’s news to convince Kyle that what he thinks he knows is six years out of date.

He’s twenty-eight and working in the Soo and considering saving up his next paycheque to invest in a slow cooker, and then he wakes up in a hospital bed and he’s not.

It’s disconcerting. Which-

No shit, Kyle, waking up and being told ‘hi, you got hit by a bus and also by the way it’s the future and your little sisters are grown-ups and your government has changed and you’re in your thirties and have partly achieved your life’s goal’ is disconcerting, and once he’s done being disconcerted, he considers being scared but settles on being productive instead. Everyone he speaks to knows him better than he knows himself, and Kyle hates it as much as he’s ever hated anything, the feeling of always being one step behind. It’s something to be remedied, as quickly as possible.

They show him the press release when he asks. It reads like a player’s injury report, vaguely constructed sentences and assurances that ‘following his accident, general manager Kyle Dubas is recovering well’ with the extremely minor exception of ‘some memory problems’.

Some.

They’re underselling it to the point of dishonesty, Kyle thinks, because he’s fairly sure that it’s a pretty major issue that the manager of their NHL team woke up thinking he was still working in juniors.

“The goal here is to calm the noise around this,” Shanahan says, balanced. “Every other front office in the league is circling like they smell blood, ownership just wants to stave them off.”

“Right,” Kyle says, trying to look informed and capable while wearing plaid pajama pants; then, an idea occurring to him, “Do you think this could be an opportunity, if our competition thinks management is incapacitated, to-”

“Management _is_ incapacitated,” Megan cuts in, stubborn. “You’re not making trades from a hospital bed when you don’t even remember getting the job.”

Kyle’s first remembered act as a thirty-four year old is going to be to disown his little sister. He concedes the point, though, reluctantly. “You’re right, I need to get briefed on the team’s cap situation first.”

Shanahan grins, like whatever Kyle said was amusing. Kyle sees a bit of approval there, he thinks.

There’s a bustle in the room as the PR people herd in the team’s leaders for the picture. Kyle recognizes Morgan Rielly from a recent draft, or- eight years ago’s draft, which, sure, fine. And behind him- what the-

“Hey, Dubie,” Rielly says, going for the handshake. He’s got less baby fat on his face than Kyle recalls him having, and he’s speaking friendly, familiarly. So, cool, Kyle’s the kind of GM who gets nicknames from his players. He can work with that. “How are you feeling?”

“I’ve been better,” Kyle says, then, still utterly distracted by the guy in the Leafs zip-up behind Rielly, “John Tavares?”

Tavares does this little nod, awkward. “Yes?”

Kyle… is missing something. He stares, but no one comments. “Sorry, why are you here?”

Every single person in the room is exchanging looks, and it makes the hair on Kyle’s neck stand up, the feeling of missing out, of expecting one step too many and finding nothing there.

It’s Shanahan who gets himself together enough to explain. “He plays for the Leafs now.”

Kyle looks around to see if he’s being pranked; then, reading the room, he lets it sink in — John Tavares is on his team — and laughs out loud, stunned. “That’s _awesome_.”

It lightens the mood, if nothing else. The PR people are grinning, and Kyle hopes for their sake that they caught it on video, because it’s the kind of moment people enjoy on the internet.

“All you,” Tavares tells Kyle, cracking a smile for the first time. “You’re pretty convincing.”

Which Kyle knew, but convincing enough to get John Fucking Tavares — he’s _good_ , and it feels good, being good, and that means that he ends up grinning like an idiot the whole time the Leafs media people snap group pictures for the social media accounts.

It’s all very friendly, everyone clearly happy that Kyle’s not dead, which he tends to agree with. It’s almost friendly enough that Kyle can get lulled into it, can forget the whole forgetting thing and feel optimistic.

Blind optimism isn’t really Kyle’s style. Certainly not when, post-picture taking, he sees Megan speaking with Shanahan out in the hallway. They’re half-obscured by the doorframe, but the pieces of their faces that Kyle can see look grim. It makes his stomach flip unpleasantly. He’s not naïve. He knows that the NHL is a business, and that any capably managed business knows to avoid liabilities. Knows that he’s a liability, at present and for as long as he’s at anything less than a hundred percent. He’s of no use to anyone if he doesn’t know what he’s doing.

“Has either of you been told anything about how the organization wants to proceed from here?” Kyle asks Tavares and Rielly, still lingering around the foot of his bed.

“They’ve been pretty lowkey about the whole thing,” Tavares shrugs. “They were even strict about how much we’re allowed to tell the guys,”

“Oh god, Willy’s been blowing up the groupchat all week, it’s awful,” Rielly chimes in. He’s a fond-complainer, Kyle decides. Talks like he’s an old man. “Like, all the young guys, but especially him, they’re worse than the press.”

Kyle’s only half listening, mind racing. Ownership is even limiting what information gets to the players. They’re _nervous_ , really nervous, and the mostly-inevitable result of them being nervous is Kyle getting sent back to the Soo.

He makes his decision without much hesitation. He didn’t get this far by waiting for things to work themselves out.

He bides his time until Rielly’s tugged into a conversation with the rest of the media crew, then grabs his keys from the baggie of personal stuff the hospital staff gave him, gestures for Tavares to come closer, and lowers his voice. “Would you mind doing me a favour?”

\---

It’s possible, in retrospect, for Kyle to divide his life into periods of relative calm between concussive head traumas, which is maybe grim but mostly just practical. Mostly just hockey.

The first one, or the first one that mattered, was when he was fourteen. Tall for his age. Not sturdy enough or fast enough to avoid getting hit and seeing stars, which he thought was a thing that only happened in cartoons. Taking him out of hockey was the first and last time his parents agreed on anything since the divorce, and it doubled as the first and last time Kyle ever yelled at them.

He remembers crying about it after, in his room at Gramma and Papa’s place, the pathetic, chest-aching kind of sobbing of a teenager convinced that he was losing the only thing he’d ever really cared about and that cared about him back. He remembers being embarrassed about it, even with no one watching, just embarrassed with himself, to be reacting irrationally the way he was, and then his grandpa came in and yanked the covers off of Kyle’s head.

“Come on,” he said, gruff, like always. “Up.”

Kyle’s glasses were skewed on his face, and he straightened them, eyes still stinging. “Where?”

“You think I’m going to find a new stick boy this late in the season?” his grandpa said. “You got a job to do.”

So Kyle picked himself up and trailed his grandpa to the rink same as always, and he smelled the familiar smell of the ice and felt like he could breathe and spent the rest of high school and everything after clinging onto hockey with both hands, trying to forget about being the kind of person to cry that way, to block it from his mind.

He doesn’t remember the most recent head trauma.

Figures.

Time goes slowly after the Leafs people leave, Kyle getting poked and prodded and interrogated by friendly neurologists, same as has been happening in the days since the accident, and then he’s finally left alone with orders to try to get some sleep, as if they aren’t going to wake him every couple of hours to check on him. He manages to count four thousand and eighty-eight of the specks in the ceiling tiles before the tail end of visiting hours when John Tavares shows up, as good as his word.

He sets Kyle’s bag next to him on the bed, and Kyle doesn’t hesitate before unzipping it. It’s like he hoped: his laptop is there.

“ _Yes_ ,” he says, allowing himself a little fist pump when the password — the randomly generated string of numbers and letters that took him two weeks to memorize back in college — still works. The screensaver’s a photo Kyle doesn’t recognize, the view of a city from a window, up high.

“You’re sure it’s okay for you to be looking at a screen?” Tavares asks, dropping Kyle’s keys onto the bedside table, looking unsure. And sure, fine, he technically has a point, because the doctors did tell Kyle to ease back into using technology and to avoid overwhelming himself with details about his future- his _current_ life, but with all due respect to their medical expertise, fuck that, Kyle’s not sitting here cluelessly while everything he’s ever wanted slips away from him.

“The sooner I get back up to speed, the better for the team, right?” Kyle asks, a question for a question, and then he offers a smile, the _trust me, I know what I’m doing_ kind. “Thanks for the help, John.”

He’s always been good at getting people to listen to him. Going with the first name, appealing to the good of the team, were the right calls — Tavares nods, reassured, and claps Kyle on the shoulder before leaving.

Kyle hardly waits for Tavares to be out of the door before he’s connecting his laptop to the hospital wifi; while he waits for that, he fumbles with the other zippers on his bag, exploring. His regular glasses apparently got smashed in the accident that landed him here, but his spares are in the side pocket where he’s always kept them. He slides them on, and the weight of them on the bridge of his nose instantly makes him feel better, or at the very least more like himself. Being able to see more than two feet in front of his face is also a nice bonus.

He takes a half-filled notebook from the main pocket of the bag, shakes his pencil loose from where it’s wedged into the spiral binding, then opens a browser window. His most visited page is his email, so he navigates to his inbox. Too many messages to count; a complete nonstarter in terms of parsing out anything actually informative. He googles himself instead.

The first page of results consists of a slew of headlines about the accident, which Kyle skims over. It’s mostly just what his doctors have told him: freak accident, he was crossing the road by the practice facility and ended up coming out the loser of a — all things considered — relatively minor scuffle with the front of a bus. There are a bunch of mostly-joking blog posts with jaded Leafs fans making conspiracy theories about it. Interesting, but not what he wants, really.

When he sets the search parameters as far back as he remembers, 2014, the results change. _Leafs Name Kyle Dubas Assistant General Manager_. _Who is this guy?: The 411 on Kyle Dubas_. _Boy Genius: New Leafs Assistant GM._

Better.

Kyle pushes his glasses up, opens his notebook to a fresh page, and spends the rest of the night relearning his life.

\---

There’s very little wrong with him, physically, save for his stitches and a few bruised ribs and the whole concussion thing, but it still takes convincing to get out of the hospital.

“Tell me again,” his specialist says, slow. “You remember-”

“It’s- disjointed,” Kyle says, slow. “There’s some family stuff coming back, my grandfather in the nursing home, the first time I held my nephew. I remember the day I got the Leafs job, calling everyone.”

The doctor frowns. Kyle wills himself to look earnest, not too eager. “It doesn’t help you to downplay the extent of your problems, Kyle.”

“I’m not downplaying,” Kyle says. “It’s coming back, glimpses, I really just need time to process. I want my life back.”

The doctor sighs. “You’ve been through a traumatic event, and unravelling a psychological coping mechanism like your amnesia is something I’d prefer to have you do in a controlled environment,” she says, and Kyle’s heart sinks, but then she continues, “With that said, though, we generally do find that immersion into your normal life is the best strategy, especially in cases like yours where you’re already recovering some memory.”

 _Bingo_ , Kyle thinks, and ends up losing the hospital-wear and gaining a strict list of follow-up appointments and medications and orders to keep a journal of what he remembers, but most importantly, he gets out, which means he can start convincing the Leafs he’s worth keeping around, which means he doesn’t feel guilty at all, really, about the fact that he bullshitted every fake memory the doctors think he’s regained based on posts from his sisters’ Facebook timelines.

It’s not as bad as it sounds, probably.

He’ll remember eventually. He just- can’t afford to wait for that to happen. Besides, it’s like the doctor said, he’ll remember better once he’s immersed in his normal life. He’s a good enough liar to make it ‘til he remembers for real.

 _If you remember_ , says the cynical voice at the back of his mind, and Kyle ignores it, smiles at the nurses on his way out and even takes a selfie with a friendly receptionist with a Leafs badge on her lanyard.

Meg insists on driving him to his place, lingers even after Kyle’s talked her out of staying to babysit him more and makes him swear up and down to call Gramma and the girls and let them know he’s okay.

“Dad wanted to come,” she says. “And Mom, and Jules, but Gramma said you wouldn’t want everyone making a fuss.”

“She’s right,” Kyle says, which is true — Gramma’s always right — if mostly in that he can’t really imagine either of his parents coming all the way to Toronto if he’s still alive and mostly in one piece. Their family is good at prioritizing.

He undoes his seatbelt, doesn’t even manage to open the door fully before Megan’s grabbing his sleeve.

“You’re sure you don’t want me to stay-”

“Megan,” Kyle cuts her off smoothly. “You’ve already missed too much work. I’m fine.”

“What if you don’t remember everything?” she asks, and maybe for the first time since Kyle woke up, she looks every inch the little sister he remembers, asking Kyle if their parents are still going to love them, if he’s going to come back and visit once he goes away for school, like Kyle’s going to have all the answers.

“Don’t worry,” Kyle says, because having all the answers, or at least sounding like he does, is what he’s good at. He tugs her into a hug, cramped in the front seat of the sedan, and ducks down to kiss the top of her head. “C’mon, Megs, you know I’m good.” He gives her a smile as he pulls back, and she returns it, if a little shakily.

“Say hi to the girls for me, alright?” he says, bright as he can, and Meg nods.

“I will,” she says. “And remember-”

“I’ll call them, I know,” Kyle finishes, and makes his escape before she can stop him again, waves at her from the front door before stepping into the building.

It’s not exactly a triumphant homecoming — he has to ask the doorman what apartment is his, which is mildly humiliating even if the guy is nice about it, and it takes him trying half the keys he’s got to figure out which one opens his front door — but Kyle makes it into his apartment, shuts the door behind himself, and exhales.

His place is nice. Nicer than anything he could have ever bought before, location-wise, of course, but also in terms of its contents. He walks through the rooms slowly, cataloguing everything he sees and adding it to what he knows about himself. There’s a stack of _National Geographics_ and _The Economists_ on the kitchen island. A couple of unwashed dishes in the sink. A slow cooker over on the counter, a better brand than the one he was saving up for, last he remembers.

The bedroom, down the hall and to the left, is simple. A big window, looking out at the lights of the building next door. A closet full of a ludicrous amount of suits and ties, and an even more ludicrous amount of Maple Leafs branded t-shirts and hoodies and windbreakers and three-quarter zips and sweatpants and that’s how Kyle learns that, okay, he apparently wears a lot of blue and white.

He runs his hand over the duvet on the unmade bed, smoothing it down. There’s a throw blanket crumpled up by the headboard. He doesn’t recall being a throw blanket person, and it’s a small thing, but an unsettling one, and the situation isn’t helped by the pair of wiry glasses on the nearest bedside table, these ridiculous, almost Harry Potter-esque things.

Kyle tries them on, swapping them for his current pair, and everything immediately goes blurry. Brilliant, he thinks, fantastic, current him has both terrible taste in frames and doesn’t know how to order lenses with the correct prescription. He puts on his non-terrible, black-framed glasses, the ones from his bag, and leaves the offending pair where he found them before heading back out into the hallway.

The living room, small without being squished, is the first place in the apartment that feels like _his_. Kyle steps into the room, takes in the framed hockey photography on the wall, all his favourite black-and-white images of classic games, of his grandpa’s teams from the Soo; and he takes in the dark leather furniture, worn in and softer than it looks; and then — his heart leaps — he takes in his books. His _books_ , all his old favourites and dozens more he doesn’t recognize on shelves that line every wall of the room, only-occasionally interrupted with the TV or pictures or piles of notebooks.

His battered, secondhand copy of _The Game_ is sitting open on the couch as if the version of Kyle who lives here had just set it down before heading out.

It’s his. This, this life here, is his.

Kyle doesn’t linger on sentimentality. Doesn’t have time for that. What he does do is figure out how to work the sound system — everything wasn’t this wireless six years ago, he’s pretty sure — and rifle through his incredibly thorough vinyl library until he finds something familiar. He lowers the needle onto the record, cranks up the volume, and gets back to work.

He gets a fairly efficient system going, in the time it takes to make it through three A-sides and two and a half Bs. He writes out crib sheets for himself on sticky notes, pairing them up with printed-out pictures and breaking down every significant person, place, or thing he’s forgotten. He puts personal things on one side of the room, hockey on the other, then starts making a timeline of key events along the back of the couch when he runs out of room, rows of sticky notes stretching six years.

He wouldn’t even hear someone opening the front door if not for a lull in the music.

Kyle’s first reaction isn’t to be scared, even though it probably should be. It’s more just incredulity, because getting hit by a bus then broken into on his first night home seems like it strains any law of probability that exists.

When Kyle gets to the door, the intruder is dropping his keys into the bowl by the shoe rack, carrying a massive hockey bag; he turns around and notices Kyle for the first time, and his mouth drops open.

“You’re home,” he says, and Kyle- Kyle knows him, he just googled him.

“William Nylander,” Kyle says, proud of himself for recognizing him even though Nylander’s one of the more memorable Leafs, physically, with longish blond hair and delicate features not-quite-hidden under the beginnings of a beard. Kyle runs through some of the points he memorized about him: wears number 88, good possession stats, difficult contract negotiation. Apparently somehow has keys to Kyle’s apartment?

“You’re okay,” Nylander breathes, rapturous, and then he drops his bag with a thud, takes two strides toward Kyle then leans up, grabs Kyle’s face, and kisses him.

Kyle freezes.

Nylander’s beard scratches against his chin. His lips are warm, his mouth on Kyle’s mouth excitedly, almost urgently.

This… is not happening. _Cannot_ be happening.

Kyle pushes Nylander away and holds him at arms’ length.

“Woah,” he says, and it’s ‘woah’ like ‘what the absolute fuck do you think you’re doing’ but Nylander must take it as ‘woah’ like ‘wow’, because he laughs out loud, breathlessly.

“Woah,” he echoes, and leans up to kiss Kyle again, and this time Kyle sees it coming, manages to dodge out of the way.

“What are you doing?” he asks, slightly horrified. Nylander’s already looking past him, distracted, finally able to see into the apartment, now that Kyle moved out of the way.

“Oh my _god_ , what did you do to the living room?” he laughs.

“Studying,” Kyle says. “Why do you-”

Nylander leaves his bag on the floor of the entrance, walks further into the apartment without waiting for an invitation. Kyle follows, still entirely and completely nonplussed, and watches Nylander take in the sticky note timeline and laugh. He has a weird laugh, all pitchy.

“This looks like one of those conspiracy boards on TV,” Nylander says, bemused. “I know you weren’t allowed to use your phone, so I get not calling, but this, were you that bored?” He doesn’t wait for Kyle to respond, just spins slow in place and takes it all in, reading off the nearest notes. “ _Raptors championship 2019,”_ he reads, then, from the cluster of notes on the side of the shelf, “ _Greg, Court’s husband, accountant.”_

“Right,” Kyle says, “Sorry, I think there’s been some kind of miscommunication-”

Nylander wanders toward the hockey side of the room, peers at the notes about the Leafs, arranged by line. “ _Auston Matthews, big head, Arizona, center-slash-first overall pick._ ”

“Please don’t move those,” Kyle says, and William Nylander ignores him entirely, plucks the sticky note next to Matthews’ off the wall.

Kyle doesn’t know how to explain it, what happens then, because Nylander doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even move, but it’s like the air gets sucked out of the room, all at once. Maybe it’s _because_ of the not moving, the way that Nylander goes completely frozen still as he looks down at his sticky note.

He reads it out loud, in this strange, pinched-off voice. “ _William Nylander, winger, blonde, Sweden_.”

He looks at Kyle as if he’s just now seeing him for the first time, standing across the living room, and Kyle has the distinct sensation of having done something wrong, or missing something, again.

“You don’t know who I am,” Nylander says. The words feel slow. Enunciated, like they’re a realization out loud.

“I know you’re William Nylander,” Kyle says, defensive in spite of himself.

“Winger, blonde, Sweden, yes,” Nylander says. He still hasn’t moved a muscle, is still staring, eyes on Kyle’s like he’s trying to bore into his soul. “You don’t remember me?”

“It’s nothing personal, I promise,” Kyle says, then, because he’s still being stared at like he’s something in a horror movie, takes matters into his own hands and crosses the room, takes the sticky note back from Nylander and presses it back into place next to Matthews’. “What?”

“Everyone said you seemed fine,” Nylander says. “The press release said ‘some memory problems’.” And _that-_

Kyle frowns, put out. “You know I’m having memory issues and you still decided to kiss me?”

Nylander is shaking his head, fast. Kyle doesn’t think he knows he’s doing it. “Don’t say it like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like it’s never happened before.”

“What, has it?” Kyle asks, scoffs, because this is a scoff-worthy thing, only the look on Nylander’s face is the single most tragic thing he’s ever seen, and it doesn’t make sense, because Kyle’s question wasn’t even really a question, it was rhetorical and sarcastic and making a joke of something that didn’t need an answer, except now it does, and Kyle doesn’t think he wants to hear it. “…Has it?”

Nylander’s mouth opens, but no words come out.

He nods.

He-

He, who is something like three years removed from being a literal teenager, and also an employee of Kyle’s hockey team, and also has a key to Kyle’s apartment, and is also a _he_.

What the fuck was Kyle _thinking?_

“That is emphatically the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” Kyle says, stunned, and the immediate impact of his words is evident, Nylander visibly crumpling in on himself like Kyle just hit him.

“ _Kyle_ ,” he says or mouths or sort of just keens, this aching thing, and Kyle wants to run and hide from hearing his name said like that, like he’s hurting someone the way it’s only possible to be hurt by someone you trusted not to do it.

They’re both just _staring_.

“I don’t know what to do,” Nylander says, faintly.

That makes two of them.

“My sister didn’t mention that I was-” Kyle starts then stops, because obviously, obviously he wouldn’t have informed his family that he was fucking a twenty-three year old NHLer. _If_ he was, _if._ He reroutes, desperately grasping for the last hope of sanity, “Look, if this is some joke, I’d really appreciate-”

“Stop,” Nylander cuts him off, and Kyle watches, incredulous, as he actually covers his ears as if being physically unable to hear Kyle will make this not be happening. “Stop it, I-” Nylander drags his hands through his hair — he probably sheds, Kyle thinks, a little manically, it’s too fucking long — and just keeps staring and staring, saucer-eyed like Kyle’s supposed to do something. “I don’t know what to do,” Nylander repeats, still hanging onto his head. “What do we do?”

Kyle blinks, hard. He wants this to be a hallucination. Maybe it is. Maybe this whole thing was, and he’s going to wake up back in the Soo, or back in his dorm after having too much to drink.

“I think you should leave,” is what he says, instead of that, because hallucination or not, Nylander is staring at him like he’s about to either cry or kiss Kyle again, and Kyle is equipped to handle precisely neither of those things. “I don’t- I can’t believe you, right now, what you’re telling me, this is just-”

“You don’t _believe_ me?”

“No,” Kyle says, taking an involuntary step back; then, “Yes, I- please just go, it’s not working hours, this discussion can’t-”

“Working hours,” Nylander echoes, flat.

“Would you please stop repeating everything I say?” Kyle says, more harshly than he means to, and that really does make Nylander cry, or at least makes his eyes fill up with tears, and _that_ , in particular or in combination with everything else, makes Nylander look mortified. _Kyle_ feels mortified, caught off guard in the worst way possible, guilty and confused and helpless, and he hates feeling helpless, but not enough to try and stop Nylander when he turns and all-but runs out the door.

The music’s still playing, record spinning like nothing’s changed at all.

\---

Kyle learns the following, in his comprehensive, deeply frantic search for any and all answers about the William Nylander situation:

Firstly, if he was secretly having sex with an employee, he was apparently good at it. The secret part, not the sex part — he combs through his texts with Nylander and they’re all perfectly acceptable levels of friendliness, normal for people who’ve known each other as long as they apparently have. There’s nothing sordid or even really flirtatious, unless Nylander’s compulsive overuse of any and all emojis with their tongues out counts as flirting. That’s a good thing, Kyle supposes, that they were smart at it, because he doesn’t have to have all his memories to be cognizant of the absolute shitshow that would ensue if anything about this situation was ever even hinted at in the media or by an opportunistic hacker. The thought would be comforting, if anything about this situation was even remotely comfortable.

Kyle likes breaking boundaries. He didn’t plan on being the person to break this particular one.

It’s not a denial scenario. He’s known for years that he’s bisexual on a mostly conceptual level, in that he had a semi-repressed crush on everyone in _Star Wars_ and that he got jerked off by a guy one year during homecoming and chalked it up to standard college experimentation, fun but not all that pertinent to the rest of his life. It wasn’t, really. Certainly not in a hockey context, which was and is the only context that really matters, as far as Kyle’s concerned.

So: he learns that, somewhere in the last six years, his priorities have changed, or at least shifted, and that’s somehow more disconcerting than anything else.

He learns that there is absolutely no photographic evidence of himself and William as anything other than player and GM. No password-protected files on his computer or selfies on his phone. The closest thing he finds is a video on the official Leafs YouTube channel of them hugging after Nylander signed his contract, and Nylander’s wearing this ridiculously ostentatious suit, smiling at Kyle with this grin that’s vaguely smug but not at all suggestive, not even when Kyle’s searching for it.

Maybe they weren’t having sex at all, he thinks a little desperately. Maybe- Kyle’s met NHL players, they’re mostly pretty stupid, maybe this is Nylander’s idea of a hilarious prank.

 _He has a key to your apartment_ , _genius,_ Kyle reminds himself, and that pokes a pretty major hole in any hope he had, because he’s all for being an approachable GM but granting a player unlimited access to his space is clearly something entirely different.

He learns, by scrolling through Instagram, that, in addition to a key to Kyle’s place, Nylander has a dubious fondness for clothing with designer labels prominently displayed, and for posting transparently obvious thirst traps in said designer clothing and often without a shirt on at all. Sometimes with friends, sometimes alone. Sometimes wearing glasses, and that little detail is maybe the only thing that could snap Kyle’s attention away from the deeply distracting amounts of skin and abs and thighs being displayed in William’s vacation photos, because-

He knows those glasses.

Kyle hurtles the arm of the couch, books it down the hallway and skids, socked feet on the wood floor, as he turns into his bedroom. He makes a beeline for the bedside table, grabs the awful wire-rimmed glasses he tried on before, and holds them up so the light glimmers through the lenses. They’re exactly the glasses that Nylander is wearing in the photos.

“ _Shit_ ,” Kyle breathes.

Shit.

\---

The strategy Kyle works out is that organizational information takes priority, Leafs, Marlies, and Growlers — he has an ECHL team too, now, apparently — and then league-wide, and then miscellaneous world events. He focuses on the facts of the game first, then on figuring out who his coworkers are and what faces match what names. It’s early enough in the season that there are fewer than twenty Leafs games to catch up on, which is good for time saving. Bad for quality of information.

Kyle’s notebook for recording his memories stays empty, and his stack of crib sheets for relearning his life gets taller, and all the while he’s dealing with the weight of an ever-increasing list of missed calls and unopened texts from William Nylander.

Nylander is persistent. Shockingly, irritatingly so, and every time his name appears on Kyle’s screen it makes him physically tense up. He’s just- the idea of them being anything at all to each other would be too much to fathom even if everything else Kyle’s dealing with wasn’t already keeping him up at night, but it is, and Kyle’s already trying to cram six years’ worth of knowledge into his brain to lie convincingly enough to keep his job, and it’s maybe unfair to resent William Nylander for trying to interrupt that, but Kyle does anyways.

He needs _time_. He hates feeling rushed, hates it even more when he goes to his appointment and the doctor tells him to think about slowing down.

“It’s a marathon, not a sprint,” she says, and Kyle is fully aware of that and several other motivational poster platitudes, thank you very much, but he’s also aware that that’s not how the NHL works, when you’re early in your career the way he is. It _is_ a sprint, a rush to prove competence and value. No point deluding himself otherwise to feel better.

His phone lights up. _MISSED CALL FROM WILLIAM NYLANDER._

Kyle turns it over so he won’t have to see the screen.

His first day back at work — earlier than strictly advised, but as late as Kyle’s willing to push it — starts fairly inauspiciously. He parks in the staff parking at MLSE, tries to walk in like he knows what he’s doing, and promptly finds himself stymied by the receptionist, who comes around her desk to hug him.

Her name wasn’t on the website. Kyle has no idea who she is. How many employees weren’t on the website?

“We were all _so_ worried,” she gushes. “TJ made you a get well card, he’s adored you since you got him that jersey for his school fundraiser.”

Kyle smiles, is spared the embarrassment of having to guess her name by the receptionist scurrying around to fetch the card from her desk, giving him a clear view of her nameplate.

“Thanks, Sarah,” he says, taking the card and trying to sound sincere. “And TJ too, this is great.” It’s great if TJ is in kindergarten. Questionable, art-wise, if he’s any older, because Kyle has no idea what any of the scribbles are supposed to be.

“He’ll be happy to hear that,” Sarah says, kind. “Now, you head on in, I’m sure everyone’s dying to see you.” She’s smiling, friendly and almost suspiciously happy, and Kyle should trust his gut more, probably, because he heads through the doors and around the corner and-

“Surprise!”

Every corner of the room is filled with people beaming at Kyle, expecting him to know them. There are trays of finger foods. A camera crew, focused determinedly right on Kyle as he schools his face into what he hopes is flattered surprise instead of horror.

Marathon, not a sprint. Ha.

He recognizes the first people to approach him, thank god.

“Brendan,” Kyle says, and then, to the man next to him — Larry Tanenbaum, MLSE chairman, grotesquely rich and most definitely on the website — “Larry, hi.” The first names are a gamble, given their relative status, but neither man reacts.

Shanahan’s smiling as he shakes Kyle’s hand, real hearty. “You gave us a scare, back in the hospital. I warned Larry he might have to do a whole room’s worth of introductions.”

“Not necessary,” Kyle says, then offers them a conspiratorial, _we’re all in on the joke_ kind of grin and lowers his voice, hyperaware of the cameras lurking around. “If you’d like to make the rounds, though, Larry, give me an excuse to try all the food-”

He gets a laugh from both of them, for that, and it relaxes him ever-so-slightly, though it doesn’t last. There’s a room full of people to meet and make conversation with, once Kyle finishes with Brendan and Larry, and the others aren’t his direct bosses, sure, but they’re people that he knows, or is supposed to, all cracking jokes and referencing shared memories that Kyle can only nod along and murmur vague acknowledgements of. Self-doubt isn’t something he spares a lot of time for, usually, at least not in an unstructured, unproductive way, but it’s creeping in now. They must be able to tell he’s lying right to their faces, absolutely every single one of them.

“I can’t believe it,” someone says from behind Kyle, and when he turns around, he can’t help but smile, and this time it’s real.

“He’s alive,” Sheldon deadpans, and it must be a special occasion because he puts up with it when Kyle leaps and drags him into a hug, relieved to see someone he actually knows, or remembers knowing.

“You would not _believe_ how happy I am to see you, Keefer,” Kyle tells him, and Sheldon pats his back, grinning as he pulls back.

“And all it took was you almost dying, it’s heartwarming, really,” Sheldon says. He’s a little rounder than Kyle remembers, his hair all the way grey and cut shorter than before. “You doing okay?”

And Sheldon’s pretty much the only person that Kyle doesn’t attempt to bullshit, mostly because it won’t work — his instinct is to answer honestly, and he nearly does before the clicking of a camera from far too close for comfort reminds him of the situation.

“Do you want to go for a walk?” Kyle asks instead of answering the question, and Sheldon looks bemused but rolls with it, the way Kyle knew he would.

No one tries to stop them as they make their way to the elevators, aside from a few hellos and shoulder pats. It’s an excuse for a party on a workday, no one’s in a hurry to call it quits.

Kyle waits for Sheldon to select a floor and pays attention to which button he presses when he does — it makes sense, GM’s important, of course he’s on the top floor. The doors slide shut, the noise from the party disappearing as they do.

“The memory problems they mentioned in the press release,” Kyle starts, because there’s no point delaying.

“You’re still having them,” Sheldon fills in the blank without needing to be told.

“You’re the only person in that room I remember knowing,” Kyle confirms anyway. “Last thing I remember is maybe a month into 2014.”

Sheldon leans against his wall of the elevator, opposite to Kyle, processing. Going right to solutions instead of reactions, which Kyle appreciates. “You’re serious?”

Kyle nods. “Unfortunately.”

The elevator shudders to a stop, the doors opening to a dimly lit, apparently empty floor. Less open than the first, all hallways and doors to individual offices. Kyle falls into step next to Sheldon, lets him lead the way and tries to walk like he’s got any idea where they’re going.

“And Shanny-”

“Doesn’t know,” Kyle says. “An NHL team can’t have a GM who can’t remember them, no one can know. I’d appreciate keeping it that way until I fix things.”

“You’re just going to fix your brain, that’s what your plan is, here?” Sheldon says as they pass closed offices and open conference rooms. “Just… fix it.” Good to know Kyle’s amnesia doesn’t exempt him from sarcasm.

“I always do,” Kyle says, and they stop in front of the last door at the end of the hall. Key card lock — he fishes his wallet out from his pocket, taps it to the scanner and pushes the door open when the little light flashes green. Lucky guess — he has at least five different passkeys to god knows where.

Sheldon frowns. “How’d you remember where your office is?”

“I didn’t,” Kyle says, and they exchange a look before he heads in. His office is bigger than he expected, lined with shelves stacked with more books — hardcovers, too, this job pays a _lot_ — and occupied mostly by a beautiful wooden desk, some leather seating. Kyle doesn’t know if he modelled his office after his apartment or vice-versa, but he appreciates the continuity.

Sheldon makes himself at home on the couch by the wall, watching Kyle look around. There are framed photos on every other shelf. More proof of Kyle’s life.

“Actual amnesia,” Sheldon says, the tone of voice that means he’s shaking his head. “Only you.”

Kyle doesn’t look away from his shelves, tracing out the signature on an autographed picture of himself with Johnny Bower. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re physically incapable of doing things the normal way,” Sheldon informs him without missing a beat. It’s chirping, but the affectionate kind. “You saw we won a Calder?”

“I did.” The team picture with the cup is in front of him, framed on the shelf, and the one of Kyle lifting it and screaming is one of the first image results on Google. None of or with Nylander. Obviously. “Still no Stanley.”

“Not yet,” Sheldon says, and doesn’t give Kyle any crap about letting himself be proud, because he’s never been the type for resting on laurels either. “Hey.”

Kyle turns to look at him, finds Sheldon staring back, more serious than before. “What’re you not saying?”

Not the type for beating around the bush, either.

Kyle considers denying it; dismisses the idea in the same thought. There’s a reason he brought this up with Sheldon, a reason he’s been bracing himself to bring up the Nylander thing. He needs advice, someone to rationalize this for him. Maybe to convince him that none of it is real and his head got hit worse than everyone thought.

Kyle crosses the room and shuts the door, after a quick glance down the hall. It’s not a topic anyone should overhear.

“You’re not dying or something,” Sheldon says, slow, and Kyle shakes his head, crossing the office again to perch on his desk.

“Nothing like that.”

Sheldon doesn’t look particularly comforted. “So…”

Kyle feels precisely like a teenager caught doing something bad and shuffling his feet as he confesses. Some deeply humiliating version of game theory, tell the truth and get fucked over either way, except the game in question is his apparent secret relationship that he’s entirely forgotten.

“So,” Kyle says, forcing himself to suck it up and speak like a grown-up. “So I was sleeping with one of the players.”

Sheldon’s reaction is exactly what Kyle expected it to be. Maybe a little louder. He’s glad he closed the door. “I’m sorry, you were _what_?”

“I know,” Kyle flinches, then amends, “Well. I don’t, but- I know of it.”

“Kyle.” Sheldon’s face, when Kyle finally looks at it, has gone through at least fourteen stages of grief, starting with shock and settling at just about as much judgement as Kyle deserves.

“I know,” Kyle says. He’s always hated people who said ‘ignorance is bliss’, but-

“Why?” Sheldon demands flatly, like they’re in one of their war room sessions and he’s making Kyle convince him of something, defaulting to the familiar.

“That would be good information to have,” Kyle says, tersely. “I don’t even remember him.”

“Tell me it’s not one of the kids,” Sheldon says, and Kyle’s expression must be easier to read than he would prefer, because- “Jesus, Kyle.”

“I _know_.” Kyle pushes at the bridge of his nose, frustrated and mortified and just entirely exhausted with all of it. “I genuinely can’t tell you- he showed up at my place and he kissed me, I didn’t see it coming. I don’t even know what I would’ve been thinking, encouraging that from him, in my position.” He shakes his head, helpless. “I didn’t think I was this kind of person.”

Sheldon doesn’t pull punches, because that’s not them. “Me neither.”

It stings. He looks disappointed, wary as if he’s not sure Kyle’s himself. Which, yeah, join the fucking club, Kyle thinks bitterly, and when Sheldon stands up, he’s half-expecting him to just walk out and head back to the party.

He doesn’t. Just sits down on the desk next to Kyle, and Kyle waits, but Sheldon doesn’t say anything at all, so they sit there a long time, just quiet.

Eventually, finally, Sheldon sighs, long and weary. “I didn’t even know you liked men,” he says. It’s an olive branch. A mostly terrible one.

“Is that really germane, here?” Kyle asks, instead of saying ‘me neither, bud’ because that seems like it would be unproductive.

“You’re right, twenty year olds are probably more boys than-”

“ _Please_ ,” Kyle says, and it comes out this slightly-pathetic thing somewhere between laughing and utterly distraught. He hates this, truly, to the point of slightly hating himself, or at least the version of himself that got him in this situation, with a perfect office and perfect apartment and disastrous mess of a personal life.

“I never mentioned anything about it to you?” he asks.

Sheldon shakes his head. “I would’ve stopped you,” he says, frank. Still deeply unimpressed. Kyle can relate.

Kyle drags his hands through his hair, squeezes his eyes shut and blinks, hard. Sheldon’s looking at him when he opens them.

“You going to fix it?”

Kyle nods. “I always do,” he repeats, and that, at least, is something he knows. He’ll fix this. He has to.

\---

He survives the week.

Gets approximately four hours sleep, total, the entire time, but manages to familiarize himself with the state of his team enough to get through a three minute conference with the press, and it gets him a bunch of approving thumbs up from the PR staff, so he assumes he doesn’t entirely fuck it up.

Nylander’s still calling. Texting. Kyle doesn’t open any of them; can’t.

Saturday night, he puts on a suit and tie and joins the rest of management in their box to watch the game. They show him up on the jumbotron during one of the TV timeouts as the in-arena announcer’s voice booms out with something about how happy they are to have him back. The crowd cheers. Kyle gives a wave, mostly pathetically, and his assistant GMs spend the rest of the game ribbing him for it. They’re nice guys. A million inside jokes and references to past discussions and observations that Kyle can barely follow. So- great, fantastic, tonight’s another night where he won’t be sleeping.

He doesn’t head to his car after the game; instead navigating the halls of the arena ‘til he gets back to the floor with his office. He stops by the staff room to make himself a coffee, adds milk and sugar then makes a beeline for his office, only waiting outside the door, sitting right on the floor in the hall-

“I tried calling you,” William Nylander says, standing as Kyle approaches, and it’s an accusation even if it doesn’t sound like one, even if Kyle takes a second too long to focus on it, caught off guard by William’s ludicrously short shorts and baggy t-shirt, his hair clearly still damp from the showers. Maybe from sweating during the game.

Not the point, Kyle.

“I’ve been busy,” Kyle says, ages late and wholly insufficient, as far as excuses go. He opens his door and walks into his office, and he still has hope for a quiet night of work, at least until William follows, closes the door without needing to be asked and drops gracefully onto Kyle’s couch, also without being asked.

“Have a seat,” Kyle says, dry; and then, because William puts his feet up on the couch and is clearly intent on making himself comfortable, “Good game.”

“I know,” William says — ah, humble too, lovely — and tilts his head, peering at Kyle intently. “You believe we’re together now?”

It’s not a blatant callout about getting ghosted, at least. Kyle puts his coffee down on his desk. “I believe what you told me,” he says, slow and cautious. “I wasn’t trying to be mean, before. You have to understand that what you were saying was-”

“Yeah, info should come from multiple sources, I know,” William says in this tone like Kyle’s supposed to appreciate what he’s saying, like he’s either quoting Kyle’s own words back to him or referencing some shared joke. “You really don’t remember anything?”

“No,” Kyle says; then, because William looks distinctly like a kicked puppy, “I’m sorry.”

William shrugs minutely, still drooping. “You probably didn’t get hit by a bus on purpose.”

“That’s… probably a safe bet, yes,” Kyle agrees. The sarcasm is lost on William. Great. He leans against the front of his desk, half-sitting, very aware of William’s eyes on him.

“The owners don’t know how bad it is,” William says, like he’s certain of it. “Your memory.”

Kyle’s instinct is to lie, but William knows more about what he’s forgotten than anyone, so that ship has sailed, clearly. “They don’t need to,” is what Kyle settles on saying. Safe enough.

William doesn’t call him out for bullshitting ownership, at least, just asks, “When do you remember ‘til?”

Kyle hesitates. “Early 2014.”

William lets out a long exhale. It sends the ends of his hair fluttering, and Kyle waits, but he doesn’t say anything else, so Kyle takes it upon himself. This doesn’t have to be a waste of time.

“Can I ask some questions?”

William nods.

“Between us,” Kyle says, trying to put it delicately. “Were we- was it a friends with benefits situation, or-”

“No,” William says, then, not quite correcting himself, “I mean, maybe at first, kind of. Or it would have been. Not really.”

Not helpful in the slightest. “And then we were-”

“Dating, I guess.” William scrunches up his face. “It’s complicated, you know, with-” He does this vague, hand-wavy gesture that Kyle understands to encompass their jobs and the age difference and the compulsively heterosexual black hole that is hockey culture, and it’s a lot, all those things, so Kyle focuses on the easiest one to unravel.

“How old were you when we first…”

“Nineteen.”

“ _Fuck_ me,” Kyle groans, horrified at himself, at the idea that he’s someone who gets promoted and turns thirty and sleeps with his nineteen-year-old employees. Legal, but- fuck.

“I turned twenty like a month after,” William says, defensive.

“That doesn’t make it better,” Kyle says flatly, because it doesn’t. “I am so sorry.”

“For what?”

“Taking advantage.”

William frowns. “You weren’t.”

It takes ungodly amounts of self-control for Kyle to avoid rolling his eyes; as is, he ends up just sort of gaping before he manages to school his face. “Disagree.”

“I don’t get to decide?”

“You aren’t exactly the most objective observer of this situation, William, no,” Kyle says, and William lolls his head back against the couch with a thud, like Kyle’s the one being obtuse here.

“Why are you so upset about this?”

Kyle laughs, incredulous and humourless. “I’m not all that psyched at the idea that I’ve turned into a textbook example of every exploitative white man ever elevated to a position of authority,” he says; then, a horrible thought occurring to him, “Do I vote conservative now?”

“I don’t know what you vote,” William says, looking at him like he’s crazy. The feeling is mutual.

“You’re claiming we were in a relationship and you don’t know how I vote?”

“Why should I?”

“Uh, because it’s _important_?” Kyle says, emphatically, and William does this little huffy sigh and rolls his eyes, so apparently self control isn’t something he concerns himself with, yet another thing for them to not have in common, and Kyle doesn’t manage not to feel at least a little victorious at being right about him — he’s a _brat_. A brat and more than a little vapid, too; Kyle suspected from all his pictures and now he knows.

“Okay, Kyle,” is all William says, like he’s humouring Kyle, and then he flicks his hair out of his face, all nonchalant, and Kyle has to stand up again and walk over to the window to force himself to cool down. He’s _annoyed_ , with William and with himself even more, because Kyle’s been working his ass off since high school to achieve his goals and he assumed that his future self wouldn’t be stupid enough to risk that work for a pretty face — because William Nylander is mockingly, unfairly, ‘haunted porcelain doll who died artfully of consumption’ pretty, Kyle’s not unreasonable enough to deny that, only he apparently was- is-

Kyle squeezes his eyes shut against the dull ache in his head, ignores it, and turns back around to face William.

“Look,” Kyle says, “my point, here, is that whatever _this_ was-” He gestures between the two of them. “It was a massive abuse of my authority, that’s the point.”

William looks bemused. “You’re not an authority figure.”

“I am, though,” Kyle says, irritated in spite of his best efforts at William’s inability to get it. “I’m not saying that as an ego thing, it’s just the facts.” He forces himself to speak slowly, calmly, to explain. “I could tell the coach to bench you, if I felt like being an asshole, and he’d have to do it. I could trade you and make you go play in a different city, think about that.”

William’s still slouched where he’s sitting, but his lips tighten when Kyle says that.

“Besides,” Kyle continues, getting on a roll. “Besides that, even, think of how incredibly risky it was to do this, knowing the kind of media scrutiny on this team. We’ve both been working all our lives to get here, I don’t- with all due respect, no quantity or quality of sex is worth risking this.”

And William’s sitting up straighter, now, his relaxed posture gone abruptly enough that it occurs to Kyle that it must have been an intentional choice to keep it in the first place. “You keep acting like it was a sex thing,” he says, staring right at Kyle and frowning ever so slightly. “Why is it so hard for you to believe that you actually liked me?”

“I like you fine,” Kyle says, because a basic function of being a GM is making sure your players don’t know you find them mostly inconvenient, but William acts like he barely even spoke.

“Don’t do the lying voice,” William says. “I’m not a child.”

“I don’t remember saying you were,” Kyle says, and people don’t call him out, usually, when he uses that voice, but William’s already shaking his head.

“You’re acting like it,” he says. “You’re asking like we’re only here so you can ask me questions.”

“We _are_ only here so I can ask you questions,” Kyle says, and realizes an instant later that it was a mistake, because William’s gone still again the way he did when he realized Kyle didn’t remember him. Like he just forgets how to function.

“So that’s it, then?” William asks, quiet. “You get your answers and go back to ignoring me, that’s it?”

Kyle huffs out a breath. “It’s not like we’re going to do whatever we were doing again,” he says, defensive, but justifiably so, he thinks, because _really_. “You didn’t actually think-”

“I did,” William interrupts. “I did think, actually.”

Could’ve fooled Kyle.

“I don’t… know what you’re looking for me to say, here,” Kyle says, slow. Balanced, or trying to be. “You have to realize that this isn’t something that’s happening.”

“You’re breaking up with me,” William translates, and Kyle flinches at that, because-

“No,” he says, then, hasty as William perks up, “I mean, yes, I- we’re not _together_ , there’s nothing to break up.”

“That’s not fair,” William says, and his voice is still quiet, he’s still sitting small on Kyle’s couch, but there’s something petulant about it. “That isn’t fair.”

“But it’s fair to break into my apartment and kiss me when I have no idea who you are?” Kyle asks, a little bit sharper than before, because he’s going through a lot, right now, and he may be a morally bankrupt possibly-conservative voter — dear god, please no — but he doesn’t need to be lectured about fairness by someone whose idea of a reasonable argument is ‘it’s not fair’.

“It’s not fair for you to act like nothing’s even real,” William says, like Kyle didn’t even speak. “It’s real, _I_ remember it’s real-”

“I don’t, though,” Kyle says. “I don’t know how you expect- you’re attached to someone I don’t remember being, and who, honestly, was making decisions based on some seriously poor judgement-”

“Poor judgement,” William echoes, and something hardens in his face, in the line of his jaw. “Fine, yeah, okay.” He gets to his feet to leave.

“Don’t- don’t get upset again, please,” Kyle requests, weary, because the last thing he needs on his plate right now is more Nylander Issues. “This is obviously not an easy situation, I’m trying to be nice about this.”

William takes a step toward him, now, somewhere between offended and shell-shocked. “This isn’t _nice_.”

No shit. “Well, it’s not all that enjoyable for me either, William, so-”

“Just- stop!” William says, too loud. “It’s just supposed to be some memories, why are you acting like this?”

Kyle shoves up his glasses so he can massage the bridge of his nose, on his feet now too. “I’m not _acting_ like anything,” he says, really slow, so William can maybe get it through his head.

He doesn’t. “You are.”

Kyle doesn’t back down. “I’m acting how I always act.”

“You’re acting like a child,” William retorts. “ _You_ are.” He doesn’t say ‘so there’ and stomp his foot, but Kyle hears both things hanging there anyways.

Kyle scoffs, derisive on purpose. If this guy thinks he can win an argument, here, he’s incredibly mistaken. “I didn’t even act like a child when I was an actual child, maybe don’t-”

“What, don’t act like I know you-”

“Right, but see, you’re insisting on this discussion continuing, so you clearly don’t, so-”

“Well, maybe I don’t _want_ to know you, if this is how you used to be.”

“I can promise you, the feeling is _incredibly_ mutual,” Kyle snaps, and they’re nose to nose in the middle of his office and Kyle can’t remember the last time he felt this angry, angry like something simple, because William Nylander’s fucking audacity is enough to drown out Kyle’s better judgement and his need to control his temper and his goal of being the bigger person, always being the bigger person, because he’s getting condescended to by this- this-

He hates it. Feels knocked off-kilter, taken aback by the strength of his own reaction.

William is still glaring. Scowling doesn’t suit him. “Fine,” is all he says, icy.

“Fine,” Kyle says back, curt, then turns and heads back to his desk and opens his laptop without saying anything else, and it’s not the kind of last word he thinks he’s allowed to take pride in, but William Nylander leaves Kyle’s office and the door slams shut behind him and Kyle takes a little bit of pride in it anyways.

\---

Logically, there are probably a lot of potential reasons why the team goes to shit.

It’s a long season. Hockey’s the most random of all sports, outcome wise, and the Leafs have had three back-to-backs since Kyle’s been out of the hospital, and Kyle could list off a hundred more reasons, he really could, but they’d all be bullshit.

William’s hurt. Not- physically, he’s fine, as far as Kyle knows, but feelings-wise, he’s clearly distracted by the fact that he and Kyle are, by mutual agreement, avoiding each other, and it’s clearly spilling onto the ice, cascading down the team until passes aren’t connecting and they’ve lost four in a row and William hasn’t scored in any of them.

“When I said fix it,” Sheldon says, as they’re sitting in Kyle’s office watching tape from last night’s genuinely abysmal game, trying to salvage something usable. “I didn’t mean emotionally scar my first line winger to the point where he literally forgets how to play hockey.”

Kyle doesn’t bother trying to lie and convince Sheldon it’s not William. Doesn’t have the energy. “I don’t know what I was thinking,” is all he says, facedown on his desk and regretting every decision he’s ever made. “Seriously, if you heard him speak, it’s like I’m supposed to drop everything to fulfil whatever misguided romantic expectations he has of me, he’s- it’s _ridiculous_ , nothing between us could ever have worked.”

Kyle doesn’t get distracted. Doesn’t let himself. He goes to all his regular meetings, figures out which doors are unlocked by almost all of his keys. Watches multiple games a night and starts realizing just how much time he spends on planes. He checks in with the rest of his sisters, the way he promised, and even makes it through conversations with his parents where they all graciously pretend like they’re going to drive up and check on him. He goes to his appointments and lets the doctors think he’s remembering.

He should be remembering by now. He’s read up on retrograde amnesia after accidents like his, and his life should be coming back, and it’s just not. The thought’s terrifying, paralyzing, even though Kyle tries not to let it be. He has to remember. He has to, because every day at the rink he learns a dozen new things he doesn’t remember and can’t teach himself because they aren’t the teachable kind of things, running jokes with Mitch Marner, whose default volume is loud enough to be audible from mostly everywhere, or Zach Hyman’s attempts to make conversation about someone called Bianca who is either a mutual acquaintance or some kind of celebrity.

Kyle has no idea. He has no fucking idea, and the team keeps losing and playing badly while they’re at it, and the media are everywhere every second that he’s trying to figure it out, lurking like they’re waiting to catch him forgetting. He takes the long route, one day, winding through back hallways to avoid a scrum of reporters post-morning skate, when he bumps into William, the first time they’ve been face-to-face since the argument. William’s with Kasperi Kapanen, mid-conversation, but he stops talking when he sees Kyle.

“Hey, Kasperi,” Kyle says, because he’s a professional; then, “William.” He smiles, pleasant, or trying to be, and William’s whole face goes scrunched up as he shoves past Kyle and out the door, all without a word.

Kapanen looks after him, looking completely confused. “Uh…”

Kyle doesn’t let himself turn and watch William leave. “Long day, I guess.”

It takes everything Kyle’s got to keep his smile until he’s alone again, and then he is, and he mostly just wants to hit something, furious at William for not even mustering up the effort to pretend to be normal colleagues. It’s as if he doesn’t realize what’s at risk here for both of them, having some extended temper tantrum just because his ex-something has finally seen sense.

And so that’s the state of Kyle’s life, his team going to shit and Nylander lurking around it all and no memories coming back at all; and Kyle knows stress, he’s comfortable with stress, but this isn’t like anything he’s dealt with before. He can’t focus properly, can’t think through the hundreds of things he has to think without picturing headlights screeching towards him, a horn blaring out, William Nylander walking into his apartment like he owns the place and kissing Kyle like that came with the territory-

“Kyle.”

Kyle jumps, startled. “Sorry,” he says.

Brendan doesn’t sigh out loud, but looks like he maybe comes close, looking at Kyle over the tops of his glasses. “I asked whether you read what scouting sent over from the sit-down with Jim.”

“Jim,” Kyle says, helpless — which fucking Jim, half of every front office in hockey is old white men called Jim — and glances down at his laptop and gets nothing from it but another look at his stupid bird’s eye view of the city. “Right, I- sorry, let me just…”

Now Brendan sighs for real. It’s worse because it’s not out of annoyance — he looks at Kyle and sets down the printout he’s been trying to discuss, looking distinctly parental. Fuck.

“You’re the one who drilled it into the guys about health being a priority,” Brendan starts, and Kyle wants to sink into the floor and die because holy fuck please stop talking about Kyle drilling into Leafs players, but Brendan just pats Kyle’s hand.

“If you need more time off-”

“No,” Kyle says, fast, before Brendan can say anything else, can turn it into an order instead of a suggestion. There’s a sudden upswell of panic inside him, making him a kid again, terrified that hockey’s going to get taken away. Being yelled at would be better than this, because this is Brendan trying to be kind, this is Kyle getting pitied while his life gets even more ruined than it already is. He doesn’t need pity.

“No,” he repeats again, and his voice comes out steady, self-assured, because it always does. “No, thank you, but this is a manageable thing, I can deal with this. What were you saying about Jim?”

When he gets back to his place that night, Kyle does what he’s always done when he has a problem he can’t solve, turns to his bookshelf and dismisses possibilities one by one — this isn’t a math kind of issue, and probably not a player autobiography kind either — and ends up sitting cross-legged on the floor, hours later, poring through _The Art of War_.

He stops at one passage in particular, one that he apparently thought noteworthy enough to underline in pencil at some point in the last six years, _all warfare is based on deception…_

Kyle reads the rest out loud, murmuring to himself. “When we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.”

_Make him believe we are near._

Kyle does a quick cost-benefit analysis. Using ancient Chinese military strategy to deal with an accidental spoiled-brat blond of a boyfriend seems like kind of a dick move, but, Kyle reasons, said accidental boyfriend is currently threatening everything Kyle cares about with his inability to control his ridiculous feelings, and all’s fair in love and war, and this is both or neither or some nebulous no-man’s-land in between, so-

_Make him believe we are near._

Kyle can do that.

\---

It’s not an especially elaborate set-up, but Kyle’s confident it’s a good one. He asks William to come by the offices after practice. Wears a knit sweater instead of a suit jacket over his shirt to look more approachable, sneakers instead of dress shoes. Peers at his reflection in the window then, on a whim, messes up his hair, just slightly.

It’s not a GM look. It’s- nice? Casual. Just two pals who used to secretly have the world’s most inappropriate workplace relationship until one of them forgot it ever happened and the other one revealed himself as deeply needy and kind of a dick, frankly-

Kyle stops himself there. _Nice_ , he reminds himself. _Be nice,_ and he’s not sure how effective it is, but he manages not to lose his nerve and cancel the whole thing before William shows up at his office door, so Kyle should probably take the win.

“William,” he greets him with a smile, and William doesn’t leave the doorway. His hoodie’s a size too big, sleeves making paws over his hands. Beating Kyle in the casual department, presumably unintentionally — William doesn’t seem like the planning type.

“Come on in,” Kyle says, still Being Nice. He planned this, too, sitting on the couch instead of behind his desk, because body language is important. Seventy percent of communication, or something like that, and Kyle ends up wishing it was a little less, because William sits next to him, sure, but he also squishes himself as far as physically possible from Kyle, plastered to the arm of the couch. So- fine. Kyle can work with this.

“I wanted to apologize,” he starts, and William still doesn’t meet his eyes, just chews on the strings of his sweater.

“So apologize.”

Kyle very valiantly ignores William’s apparent oral fixation and says what he prepared. He’s not even lying, which is a refreshing change of pace; he’s learned that honesty, deployed effectively and a little selectively, can be good way to get people on your side. “I messed up,” he says, frank, and waits for William to look at him. Good.

“I know I messed up,” Kyle goes on. “And I can’t excuse that, how I made you feel, but I hope you can try to understand- I’m asking you to try to understand how much this was for me to take in. I had just gotten home, and I was- I _am_ still convincing everyone that I remember more than I do, and it was just- a lot. You startled me. I shouldn’t have taken that out on you.”

He throws in the right amount of contrite hesitancy, pushes up his glasses and holds William’s gaze. “I’m sorry.”

William doesn’t even try to question him. Doesn’t even look skeptical. “You don’t- you can stop apologizing now,” he mumbles, his odd, monotone voice. There’s a wet spot where his mouth was, at the tassel of his hoodie’s drawstring. “I shouldn’t have gotten mad at you for forgetting.”

“I wish I hadn’t,” Kyle says, and that’s the truth, as well, if not for the reasons William wants it to be.

William stretches his legs out on the couch, just the tiniest bit. Kyle watches, but stays on his half. He can practically hear William thinking.

“So now what?” is what he asks eventually, looking at Kyle the exact same as that first night, expectant, like Kyle’s going to have the answer. “What do we do?”

This time, Kyle’s ready. “We could- talk?” he offers. “Not during work hours, just- as people, we could talk.”

“Talk,” William repeats, like the word’s in a language he doesn’t speak.

“I can’t promise anything,” Kyle clarifies, quick, because he has no intention of making the same mistake twice, that’s not how he works. “I’m not promising, I just- you mattered to me, clearly. So. I’d like to see why.” He shrugs. “We owe each other that, right?”

And William’s beaming, now, the change to his face so pronounced it’s like the sun after a storm, something nearly unsettling about it, almost- too open, enough that Kyle wants to hide his eyes, to tell William to protect himself better. He’s too happy, all because of Kyle offering to talk to him.

“So what do you say?” Kyle asks, pushing through. He holds out his hand to shake. “Friends?”

William doesn’t shake his hand. What William _does_ do is launch himself across the couch and hug Kyle so hard it nearly sends them both teetering to the floor.

“…sure, okay,” Kyle squeaks, winded and also being lightly strangled by six feet of overly affectionate NHLer. Kyle flails for a moment, unsure what to do with his arms, and settles on patting William’s back only slightly uncomfortably. Sue him- the guy’s basically in Kyle’s _lap_ , and even when he finally pulls back, he’s still got that smile on his face, the biggest Kyle’s seen, so trustingly hopeful it’s blinding.

Something like guilt gnaws unpleasantly inside Kyle. He can’t help it, he’s- he understands that personal feelings and career success are always going to be at odds, to some extent, and he knows the right choice to make, objectively, but he just- he feels bad, lying to someone so obviously invested. So obviously at a disadvantage.

 _For the team_ , he reminds himself, stern. _For hockey._

\---

(The Leafs win that night, 6-2. William gets a goal and two assists.

Kyle feels less bad after that.)

\---

Kyle’s still not sure how he feels about the bodywash he apparently uses now — the sandalwood smell is stronger than he’s used to, and the bottle is so sleek and obviously expensive that he feels like a dick every time he uses it — but he takes his shower and changes into sweats and his old, worn-soft Brock sweatshirt before heading down the hall, yawning as he goes. He’s planning to make himself a coffee, spend a couple hours going over the latest set of numbers the stats department sent before getting ready for real, only he takes two more steps and then nearly has a heart attack, because-

“Oh my- why are you in my apartment?” Kyle asks, and William Nylander kicks his last shoe off, real nonchalantly, in the general direction of the mat.

“You said yesterday I should come whenever,” he says, like _duh_.

“I assumed you’d text or something,” Kyle says, and if it comes out a little pointedly, sue him, he’s dressed like a slob and his hair’s still wet and, frankly, breaking and entering is seemingly increasingly like a habit of William’s, which is concerning. “Or, you know. Knock.”

And his heart’s still racing, residual shock from finding himself not alone when he thought he was, so he’s slower than he would be otherwise to notice the look on William’s face, the key he’s still holding in his hand. There’s a little Maple Leafs keychain attached.

Kyle forgot the _fucking_ key.

“Sorry, Kyle,” William says, and for moment Kyle thinks he’s freezing up again, but then he just does this jerky little movement, as if to take the key off of his keychain. He looks humiliated. “Sorry, I can-”

“No,” Kyle lies — great job, Dubas, attempt to be nice and immediately remind him that you’re not the same you he wants — and hastens to recover. “No, it’s yours, I gave it to you, it’s fine.”

“I don’t need to keep it, I can-”

“Really, it’s- it’s a non-issue,” Kyle says. It lands terribly. William nods, stiff, and there’s a brief, horrifyingly awkward silence as they both stare, unsure what to do, and then William shoves the key back into his pocket and darts past Kyle into the kitchen, as if he thinks Kyle’s about to stop him.

Kyle doesn’t. It’s a close thing.

 _Just make him like you enough to play well_ , Kyle thinks. _Just until he can get his head around the new normal._

“So,” Kyle tries, trailing William into the kitchen. “What do you do for fun?”

If there’s any positive to Kyle making an idiot of himself, it’s that William forgets to look miserable in favour of chirping. “Don’t be so awkward,” he chides easily, any trace of sadness gone like it was never there. It’s disconcerting, how quickly William can slide into nonchalance.

“Nothing about that was awkward,” Kyle says, and resists the urge to counter with ‘no _you’re_ awkward’, because he’s not a middle schooler. He shouldn’t bother, maybe: William is already walking around the kitchen, turning so he can face Kyle from the other side of the island.

“It was,” William informs him, drumming his fingers on the countertop, suddenly businesslike. “But, okay, some stuff for you. I don’t cook, really, or use my kitchen, but we talk a lot in here, usually when we’re having breakfast after I stayed over.” He hops up to sit on the nearest stool. “My spot is this side, do you remember?”

“No,” Kyle says, because he’s trying, honestly, straining for something in William’s words to feel vaguely familiar, but his mind stays blank. “What did we do for breakfast?”

“You’re pretty good at making omelettes,” William says. “I just have a smoothie or something, usually, if I have to eat a lot at team breakfast later.” He looks like he’s thinking really hard for important things to mention, ends up adding, “You usually buy frozen mangos because I like them,” which, sure. “The cut-up kind.”

Kyle’s become the kind of person who sleeps with someone whose idea of conversation fodder is cut-up mango. Maybe he should be grateful for forgetting that.

“What do you do?” he asks, hoping at least a little desperately for _something_ , some element of any sort of intellectual connection they might have had, any hint that William Nylander isn’t exactly what he looks like. “In your free time?”

“Oh,” William says, brightening. “I go shopping sometimes, or for naps.”

“Naps.”

Kyle despairs.

“Yeah,” William says. “I like being around while you do stuff. Do you remember?”

“…No,” Kyle says, again.

The silence presses in.

William meets Kyle’s eyes for the briefest of seconds, then gets up from his chair as quickly as he sat down and heads for the living room. Kyle wonders if they’re just going to spend the afternoon doing a tour of his apartment, but he follows William and sits down on the couch next to him, a safe distance of one cushion’s-length away.

“So we like watching sports,” William says, and his voice hasn’t changed but, for the first time, Kyle picks up on something like nervousness from him too. It’s reassuring, sort of, to know that at least Kyle’s not the only one excruciatingly aware that this is the worst and weirdest situation he’s ever been in.

“Sports are fun,” Kyle says, and hopes it comes out more encouraging than inane.

William, clearly comfortable with inanity — don’t be a bitch, Kyle — folds his legs under him on the couch, picking up steam. “Yeah, so we sit here, like this,” he says. “And you sometimes are a dick about eating chips or things that aren’t in my diet plan, but usually you cook dinner for both of us and we eat while we watch.”

He holds out a hand, expectant, and it takes Kyle a second to realize what he’s asking for. Kyle passes him the remote, watches William turn on the TV and navigate to the list of PVR’d shows. All sports, a couple of random sitcom episodes sprinkled in.

“You like explaining stuff,” William continues, scrolling through the list too fast for Kyle to read anything in full. “Right, and I always pretend to get mad at you for talking too much during games but really I like listening, which you know.” He turns to look at Kyle, hopeful. “Do you-”

“I’ll let you know if I remember,” Kyle cuts him off, and the ensuing silence teeters again on the brink of awkwardness, but Kyle catches sight of a name he recognizes as William scrolls through the list.

“Bianca Andreescu!” he says, excited. “That- Zach Hyman was trying to talk to me about her, who is that?”

“Oh,” William says, scrolling back up to the recording in question. “She was so cool, you had her come talk to us in the room about attitude and winning and stuff.”

“What does she do?” Kyle asks. “Why-”

“She plays tennis,” William says, and presses play. A commentator’s voice starts mid-sentence, speaking near-monotonously over establishing shots of crowds filing into a building, of clips from past matches. William talks over him, chattering, “Like, she’s from here, and really young, and she won the US Open, you were really excited about it. I think Hyms kept in touch with her because of some volunteering thing? You helped him arrange it, and you like when we follow up with community stuff like that.”

And the tennis thing is nice, sure, but something in the way William’s speaking, how much he knows and is sharing and how easily he’s doing it-

Kyle has the stirrings of an idea.

“And this happens a lot?” he asks, deliberately keeping his voice casual. “Me discussing stuff like this with the team?”

“ _All_ the time,” William says, clearly encouraged by Kyle’s interest. “Like, you and Hollsy were debating for months actually, about this album that came out, I forget who it was by, you kept saying it was so good and you even looked up a bunch of reviews online to prove it- the Arkells, that’s who it was, you’re obsessed with them-”

And he just keeps _talking_ , all the jokes and conversations and personal things Kyle can’t remember and hasn’t been able to look up, stored in William Nylander’s head like they’re nothing.

“I’m still a fan of them?” Kyle asks. “The Arkells, they made it out of Hamilton?”

And William answers that too, settling cozy into Kyle’s couch, and Kyle, for the first time since he arrived, doesn’t mind. They sit like that, the US Open still playing through on the TV, Kyle grilling William for information and trying to sound like it’s just a fun conversation. He steers clear of any more talk of overnights and cozy breakfasts together and all that that implies. Just sticks to the facts. Doesn’t take notes, even though he’s sorely tempted. It doesn’t matter. He’s got a good memory, obvious exceptions aside.

This is good, he decides. Obvious exceptions also aside. This, the William Nylander Situation, Platonic Team-Saving Edition, can be mutually beneficial.

This is good.

\---

What happens is:

The pages of the journal where Kyle’s supposed to be writing down his memories stay blank, the Leafs keep winning, and Kyle figures out that he’s even better at lying than he expected.

It’s a process, is what he’s figured out. A repetitive one, at its core, the days spent travelling or in meetings or on the phone, the evenings spent in the box at games. There’s always somewhere for Kyle to be, and in a way, it’s helpful, how structured his time is. Gives him a routine, lets him start recognizing the team and arena staff and beat reporters without thinking about it.

He’s a big enough person to admit that William Nylander is a part of that. It’s still a bizarre situation, of course it is, but they get a routine going there as well. William takes to texting before he comes up and unlocks the door, which he does more days than not, and Kyle tolerates it, because William knows more than Kyle gave him credit for, about the things that it’s been hard for Kyle to learn on his own.

He forwards Kyle a bunch of links to things he sent to the team before. Shows Kyle how his grandma has a Twitter account, apparently, and explains why people keep replying to anything Kyle retweets with ‘what the fuck is up, Kyle’ — _memes_ , there are so many memes Kyle’s missed — and catches Kyle up on every bit of Maple Leafs gossip from the last six years.

He doesn’t try to kiss Kyle again. Doesn’t come close.

Wednesday morning, mid-November, Kyle’s squinting down at his slow cooker, which has far too many buttons, none of which are clearly labelled. When he presses one that looks promising, the thing starts making this high-pitched squeal of a beeping noise.

“What in the fuck-” Kyle mutters to himself, under his breath, and when William laughs from over on the other side of the counter, it makes Kyle jump. He forgot he wasn’t alone. “Yes?” he asks, maybe a little defensively.

William’s got his arms folded on the countertop. “It’s like, weird to think about,” he says. “You think you’re twenty-eight.”

“I know I’m not.”

“But you feel like you are,” William says. “From what you remember, right?” He leans his chin on his arms, looks precisely like some kind of androgynously pretty angel in a renaissance painting who happens to be wearing leggings and sitting in Kyle’s kitchen, looking at him expectantly as if heart-to-hearts are in any way part of whatever delicate balance they’ve negotiated, here.

“Is it that obvious?” Kyle asks. “I can’t have changed that much in six years.” Everything that he can remember would suggest that his personality’s been pretty consistent his whole life.

William looks thoughtful. “You’re… calmer now? Before the accident, I mean,” William tries, then reconsiders, “Or, I guess, better at not saying what you think. At not swearing at slow cookers.” Kyle rolls his eyes, recognizes a chirp when he hears one, and William’s smiling, just small, when he concludes, “You’re more serious, since you got the Leafs GM job.”

And there’s something else that Kyle’s been wondering, recently, because being able to pump William for information has been helpful but also a little bit concerning in terms of boundaries, because Kyle’s technically his boss. “I talked about work with you?”

“Just on-ice things,” William says. “That was our rule, since Switzerland.”

Kyle has no idea what that means, Switzerland. Finds out when he looks it up that he apparently met with William’s agent there, during the contract dispute, but in terms of rules- nothing.

He doesn’t ask William to clarify. That’s another rule, this one self-imposed: he can request any and all information from William, as long as it doesn’t pertain to their relationship. It’s not a can of worms Kyle wants to open, because he refuses to let either of them be any more deluded here than strictly necessary — this, their current arrangement, is a matter of practicality. It’s functional, keeps William happy and keeps Kyle informed. No point risking that by dredging up a past that, as far as Kyle’s concerned, is best left forgotten.

William doesn’t bring it up either.

The Leafs keep winning. Kyle gets one of the data science interns to give him a rundown of the latest software they’re using to run the numbers. He watches reruns of the Jays with William, even though the team’s so bad it’s nearly comical. He does games, planes, meetings, one then the other, again and again, and then it’s been more than a month and Kyle sits there in his office, takes a moment to himself and, for the first time, lets himself realize- he did it. He made it here, to the NHL. He’s allowed to, hell, encouraged to watch as much hockey as he can, and he’s put together a roster that he’s proud of, and his work _means_ something to people. Kyle wanted this, always. Never really thought he’d get it.

He wonders if the version of himself he forgets being ever got used to this, ever started seeing this life as commonplace. He must have, Kyle thinks, to take the risk of William Nylander.

It’s a bizarre dualism, trying to reconcile the things he knows about himself, now. Thinking about yourself as theoretically bisexual is incredibly different from looking down at your hands and knowing they’re intimately familiar with doing things you’ve only ever thought about.

Kyle never really thought he’d get to have that, either.

 _Best left forgotten_ , he reminds himself, because there are valid reasons, reasons other than William Nylander, why he didn’t pursue that part of himself.

He made it to the NHL. He’ll keep making it, here.

\---

Kyle’s stubborn, but not unreasonable: the weather gets colder, the days shorter, and he can admit with minimal reluctance and only mild begrudging that it is, occasionally, nice to have company. He has to give William credit — he’s lower maintenance than Kyle was worried about, content to talk when Kyle wants to talk, or just to sit on his phone, occasionally humming to himself while Kyle reads or works. He almost falls asleep a couple of times, sprawled on the couch. Kyle always coughs or says something to wake him up, because this thing they’re doing, it needs boundaries or it’s just Kyle making the same mistakes.

He watches for signs, waiting for William to get bored and stop coming by as frequently, to give up on Kyle magically turning back into whatever he wants him to be. He doesn’t.

The play-by-play of the Raptors game is echoey in the kitchen, an ebb and flow of excited yelling as possessions alternate. Kyle’s streaming the game on his tablet, which is propped up against his toaster as he makes dinner, chopping the ends off of asparagus while the oven warms up. Aside from the Raps commentators, no one’s talking and no one has for a while, Kyle focused on dinner and William over on his side of the counter, on his phone.

As if to prove Kyle wrong, William scoffs a laugh, soft. Kyle looks at him, raising his eyebrows.

“The boys are out and Dermy’s doing his white girl dancing again,” William explains. He turns his phone so Kyle can see a poorly-lit recording of Travis Dermott shaking his ass extremely enthusiastically. William’s still grinning when he goes back to tapping out a response, and Kyle finds himself watching him, genuinely curious. It’s a Saturday night, one of the only ones without a Leafs game or travel all season.

“Is it not…” Kyle searches for the word, “isolating?”

William glances up from his phone, barely. “What do you mean?”

Kyle thinks before he speaks, because the thought has occurred to him before, is playing out in front of him now, and he wants to articulate it properly. “Your teammates are out having fun,” he says. “You seem- fun. But you’re sitting in my kitchen watching me cut asparagus.”

William, for what it’s worth, looks like he’s actually listening, to the point where his tongue is poking out a little. There’s something appraising about the way he looks at Kyle, something- not irritated, exactly, but like he’s used to hearing similar things. “People always think I’m a certain way,” he says. “When they see me. And I’m good at being that way, sometimes? But sometimes I just like being at home.”

He doesn’t give Kyle time to dissect the potential implications of what exactly he means by ‘home’. “I like hanging out with you or playing video games with Kas or calling my family. You guys don’t expect me to be anything.”

The end of the knife scrapes along the cutting board. “Fair enough,” Kyle says, because it seems safe, and William shrugs.

“That’s why I said we could be friends, now,” he says, “even though you just pretended to apologize because you needed my help convincing everyone you remember stuff.” His voice stays light even as Kyle processes his words and stops mid-cut. “I missed being around you.”

Kyle’s still standing there frozen.

William knows, then. Has known, maybe this whole time, that Kyle’s apology was bullshit. Kyle doesn’t know what to do with that, someone seeing through him and going along with it anyways. It doesn’t usually happen. Doesn’t ever, actually, apart from Sheldon, and that’s different, this isn’t- that. William Nylander is not supposed to be able to do this.

He doesn’t realize he’s staring until William looks up and catches him at it.

“Don’t overthink.”

“I’m not overthinking,” Kyle says.

“You always are,” William says, then, sing-song, “Always-always.” He smiles, sort of wistful, then looks back down at his phone.

It shouldn’t be this much of a surprise. Kyle- he’s known for a while now, or should have, at least, that William’s more perceptive than he lets on. No other way he’d retain as much as he has about Kyle’s life, about the team and the organization and everyone peripherally involved in either. It’s still jarring, how at-odds it is with what Kyle expected of him.

He’s known Kyle’s been lying to his face this whole time, and he’s been staying around anyways.

Kyle swallows, tries to collect himself. “…Sorry,” he says, mildly shamefaced and not entirely sure what to do with it.

“It’s okay,” William says; then, matter-of-fact, “Besides, you were _very_ freaked out about commitment even before you forgot I existed, I’m used to it.” And he says _that_ like it’s nothing at all, and if Kyle didn’t feel like shit before, he does now. He doesn’t like the way William said that, just accepting of it like he’s accepting of everything else, because it implies that William sees it as acceptable and reasonable that Kyle viewed him as something- as something disposable, temporary, and whatever their relationship was, hideously complicated and questionably ethical, Kyle gave William a key to his apartment. Interest was clearly not the issue.

“It’s not you,” Kyle says; then, when William looks at him and raises his eyebrows, “Or, I- I’m confident it wasn’t because of you.”

He dumps the cut-up asparagus ends into the trash; starts positioning the stalks on the baking tray, mostly for something to do with his hands as he continues. “I’m just- people tend to view relationships, people, as absolutes, and I’ve seen up close how wrong that is. I know how bad it is when that expectation implodes.”

“So that’s what I’m saying, that any- whatever you said, any freaked-out-edness I’ve expressed about commitment, it’s not- or it wouldn’t have been because of you, it’s because I’m aware that trusting in anything, particularly in people, to be unequivocal and permanent is- it’s tempting, but it’s every thought fallacy ever, it’s just not the smart choice if you look at all the information. At precedents.”

He’s rambling. One whiff of sincere human emotion and he becomes inarticulate. Kyle clears his throat, embarrassed. “And, you know. Other cliché child-of-divorce bullshit that I thought I’d be over by the time I hit thirty, but I guess that- it didn’t happen, evidently.” He stops fidgeting with the asparagus, long-since evenly spaced on the tray. “I mean, not guessing, you obviously- you know.”

He forgets why he thought this was a good idea. This is deeply, soul-crushingly mortifying.

William just tilts his head, smiling fondly enough that Kyle wants to hide more than he did already. It makes William’s eyes look bigger and bluer, which is nonsense, frankly. “You still hate talking about feelings stuff, huh?” he asks, bemused.

“I mean,” Kyle contemplates lying, then, because that didn’t work out so great the first time, “Yeah, no, this is pretty much the nightmare scenario. I’d rather be hit by another bus.”

William cackles, his odd, broken-up laugh, ducking his head so his hair falls in his face, his eyes all crinkled up, and Kyle can’t help but smile at the sound, and it’s the nearest thing to honesty that he can remember, sits warm inside him, something homey about it.

\---

It doesn’t feel like a dream, when Kyle dreams of Switzerland.

He’s angry, is what it feels like, toting around a dozen copies of contracts that the Nylanders still find unsuitable, sitting in restaurants in Switzerland and trying to be collected and calm and professional while his boyfriend sits across the table and avoids eye contact while his agent lectures Kyle as if Kyle’s trying to fuck him over. It’s been months of this, an ugly, simmering dispute where any semblance of the line between work and personal life splintered into nothing, finally boiling over the moment he and William get alone in Kyle’s hotel suite.

It’s the first time they’ve been face to face since the end of the season, and they’ve never once fought like this before, never close.

“You don’t care,” William says, still and practically shaking, he’s so angry, and Kyle throws his hands up, incredulous and jet-lagged and fed-up with having to be the reasonable one in all of this.

“I flew to a different continent to have this conversation with you, Will!”

“You flew here for work,” William says, and it’s not him, it’s words parroted back from parents and agents and god knows who else. “You’re trying to convince me-”

“You’re not listening to anything I’m saying.”

“I’m your _job_ -”

“If you were only my job I would have dealt with this by now,” Kyle snaps.

“So deal with me,” William snaps right back. “Trade me, there, problem solved.” He turns to leave and Kyle grabs his arm, spins him back around.

“Don’t you _dare_ ,” Kyle says, and his voice comes out ragged and they’re staring each other down, furious and aching and not something Kyle knows how to handle even a little bit, being this exposed in front of someone. There’s not enough air in his lungs. “Don’t you dare act like losing you has ever once been an option, for me-”

And then nothing else because William surges up into his space and kisses him so fervently it hurts, and Kyle doesn’t even think before he’s kissing him back, before he’s clutching onto him, they’re clutching onto and crashing into and a dozen other verbs that slip away before Kyle can hold onto a thought long enough to think them.

 _Will_ , is all that comes, when he can muster up something coherent, _Will, Will_ , just singing out for him, even as William bites his lip, even as they keep pulling closer, rough, because they’re neither of them quite as nice and reasonable as they like to think they are.

This was inevitable, Kyle thinks, their jobs coming between them the way that was always a possibility; and it was just as inevitable, he decides, that he wouldn’t care, that he’d make the choice he makes right now.

“I want you with me,” he says, asks, one they’ve broken apart, both breathing hard, foreheads still pressed together. “I’ll make something work, don’t go away from me.”

It’s a sickening kind of scary, giving someone that power, like handing William a knife and guiding it straight to Kyle’s gut and begging him to stab and twist. He’s the one person in the world Kyle thinks he trusts not to.

Kyle feels William nod; tugs him into a hug and, as William tucks his face into the crook of Kyle’s neck and clings to a handful of his shirt, finally exhales for what feels like the first time in months.

He’ll figure this out for them. They’ll be okay, they’ll keep making this work, thank god, thank _god_ , and then-

Then Kyle wakes up panting, gasping up at the ceiling and reaching for the empty space at the other side of the bed.

“Will,” he gasps, and there’s one spun-out droplet of a moment where he expects to feel him, hanging there before it breaks, and then it does.

Kyle scrambles to sit up, dragging a hand through his hair then fumbling reflexively for his glasses, his journal, both on the nearest bedside table. He has to write it down, his dream, it was- it _wasn’t_ a dream, he’s as certain of it as he’s been of anything since he woke up in a hospital bed. He remembers that, the dream, he and William yelling at each other in a hotel room in Switzerland, months of negotiating and confusion and being on opposite sides melting away in a moment of vulnerability that was terrifying then and terrifying to remember now, as terrifying as it was — is — a relief.

That was real. That was Kyle’s life. That was _him._

He remembers that being him.

\---

It’s not the floodgates scenario that Kyle hoped it would be, when he woke up. No sudden rush of everything he’s forgotten reappearing in his brain.

“This isn’t something to be disappointed by,” his doctor says at his next appointment, when Kyle couches his dream as a new memory instead of his only one and demands to know why he doesn’t have more. “Really, this is incredibly encouraging progress. You’re on the right track.”

And Kyle doesn’t know about that, is hesitant to be overly optimistic, because he still spends more time than is convenient googling things about his life and pop culture. Still sees his desktop background every time he opens his laptop, that view out a window that Kyle hasn’t been able to bring himself to change. It’s Toronto, he knows that much. Not taken from his apartment, or from any building especially nearby. Another half-known thing, dancing just out of reach in his head.

Closer than before, he reminds himself. Same as all his memories, because it’s not floodgates, once he remembers Switzerland, but it’s not nothing, either. More like- a trickle.

He remembers standing on the stage at the draft, “The Toronto Maple Leafs are proud to select, from the Soo Greyhounds, Rasmus Sandin,” and getting chirped later for saying it wrong and not even caring, because this was _his_ first pick.

He remembers nearly falling asleep in a taxi after a particularly awful road trip, weary from a season of underperforming and the reality that he was going to have to fire someone and deal with the fallout.

He remembers William stealing Kyle’s old t-shirts to sleep in, the way he’d always end up mouthing at the collar to the point where Kyle got used to it, and then started to tease him about it, and then started finding it hopelessly endearing.

Kyle thinks, dryly, that, so long as his brain is recovering memories at the rate of one every few days, it would be nice if it could select them a little more practically. He can’t bring himself to be upset — the six years are still mostly nothingness, but there are little lights in the dark, signs that a chunk of Kyle’s life isn’t gone forever. He can get it back. He _will_ get it back.

“That’s the bright side, then,” Sheldon says, obviously thrilled and pretending not to be when Kyle gets into work and tells him about the latest glimpse he’s remembered. “Finally start pulling your weight around here again.”

Kyle shoves him, fond, but he’s too relieved to really put up a fight. It’s not baseless optimism if he’s got a reason for it, he figures, and he keeps getting new ones: the annual GM meeting goes well, mostly, weeks of memorizing people’s faces and names and trade histories paying off. It’s productive, making headway on potential deals and building bridges in a way that feels like exercising a muscle Kyle hasn’t been able to use since the accident. He _likes_ GM-ing, likes how consuming it can be, how much it demands of him. Likes knowing that he’s good at it, too.

Shanny congratulates him when he gets back, asks offhandedly if Kyle wants to handle the speech at the big MLSE Foundation fundraising gala in a couple of months, since his accident and recovery were such a big story. Kyle agrees, and that translates to hours spent sitting sprawled on the floor of his living room, picking William’s brain for anything he might have mentioned before about the foundation, picking his own brain while William quizzes him on all the donors he’s going to be meeting.

“Okay,” Kyle says, plucking the next name out of his stack of flashcards. It’s dark outside, has been for a while, but the lights inside, the record playing softly from the sound system, keep it cozy enough. “Richard Bradley.”

William chews his lip as he thinks, then brightens. “Oh, I remember this one, you _really_ hate him!” William says, eager. “He makes sexist jokes about his wife and always calls you ‘son’.”

“I do hate him,” Kyle says, scrunching up his face in disgust — ‘son’, like he’s some precocious elementary schooler with a paper route — before catching himself, because bias based on a one sentence description before technically meeting someone is how mistakes happen. “You know,” he says, thoughtful, stretching out his legs and wiggling his toes. “In a way, forgetfulness might be kind of a benefit?”

“That’s not true at all,” William says, skeptical, but Kyle shakes his head, getting into the challenge of being convincing, the way he always does.

“No, but listen, getting rid of pre-conceived notions, at least to a certain point, kind of makes you less susceptible to things like the availability heuristic, right?” William looks at him blankly. “It’s- Kahneman, I can lend you the book.”

William snorts, snatches the flashcard from Kyle. “You’re the one studying, Dubas,” he says, real prim, and Kyle grins, and the whole thing is companionable enough that Kyle doesn’t even call him out for the sarcasm.

Winter hits seemingly overnight, the way it always does in Toronto. Weeks of chilly winds, of almost-flurries, and then Kyle wakes up one morning and the world is blanketed in white, just in time for the holidays. He knows by now that attempting public transit will mean selfies and well-meaning advice from commuters on how to run his team, so he braves the traffic — hellish, the power’s out at four different intersections — and a day of mostly fruitless calls around the league before making it back home.

“What do you do for the holidays?” Kyle asks over reheated leftovers, later that night.

William twirls his forkful of pad thai. “Everyone used to fly over, when Alex was in Mississauga,” he says.

“Your younger brother,” Kyle confirms, and William nods.

“Now there’s no point,” he continues. “So I don’t know. Zachy invited me to Hanukah, and I think JT was maybe going to host a thing for everyone without family here? Probably if we show up he’ll try to make us work out or something, though, so.”

It strikes Kyle as odd, William being so nonchalant about his lack of plans for the days off; it only occurs to Kyle later that whatever holiday plans William had probably involved Kyle, and he can’t help but feel a little guilty at that. He has this impulse, loading presents into his car to make the drive to the Soo for Christmas Eve, to text William and invite him along, save him being on his own, but Kyle talks himself out of it before he can actually do it — it would be inappropriate, implying something that he’s Not Allowed to imply. Not to mention he’d have to explain it to his family. Not to mention that’s just- not what they do.

 _I remembered when the plane got grounded in the snow storm in Minnesota,_ he texts instead, just something so it’ll stop nagging at him. It’s not exactly holiday cheer, but William sends back a bunch of exclamation marks and laughing faces — tongues out, as usual — so if he resents Kyle for ruining his Christmas, he’s good at hiding it.

But then- he’s not the resentful type. Kyle doesn’t think William could be resentful if he tried, honestly, and, oh good, the guilt is back again.

 _Have a good Christmas_ , Kyle sends, final, then tosses his phone into the backseat and gets behind the wheel so he won’t say anything else.

\---

The win against the Caps is the Leafs’ first after a row of losses. None of them were bad, more bad luck than anything else, and tonight’s win feels deserved, fills Kyle up with a now-familiar kind of recognition. He can see his fingerprints on this team.

Kyle gets settled back at his place, tugs off his tie and puts on a record, just quietly, for something to listen to. He pulls up a chair in the kitchen and sits down to watch the footage the video coaches clipped from the game; hardly glances up from his phone as William comes through the door and heads straight for the freezer. Kyle, too used to him making himself at home by now to attempt to protest, just watches him with mild interest as he takes out the bag of frozen mango cubes, holds it to his side, and lets out this positively obscene sound of pure relief that almost distracts Kyle from why he made the sound in the first place. Almost.

“The hit from Ovechkin,” Kyle says, connecting the dots — he saw it, in the third, but William’s line continued their shift and got a scoring chance, so Kyle dismissed it — and then taking himself aback with a sudden surge of- he doesn’t know. Protectiveness, maybe, on a purely normal GM level, for one of his players getting hurt on a stupid, unnecessary play.

“I’m okay,” William says, still clutching the bag of mango to his side and wincing when he takes the seat next to Kyle. Fucking Ovechkin. “Nicky made him say sorry.”

“Let me see,” Kyle says, without thinking of how it’ll sound, expectant, and blanches once he does.

If William notices, he doesn’t call Kyle out for it. “I said I’m okay.”

“And you’re really bad at lying,” Kyle says; then, brusque so it won’t sound like anything it isn’t, “Come on.”

“You’re becoming a worrier again, this is fun,” William says, wry, but he shifts the bag of frozen fruit and tugs his shirt up, exposing his side and the mottled purplish bruise wrapped around his rib cage. It stands out starkly, painfully against the porcelain of William’s skin, and the rise and fall of his breathing is shallow, as if the movement hurts.

“Your idea of how to fix this is frozen mango,” Kyle says, torn between feeling endeared and exasperated and winding up expressing those things as sarcasm. He gets up to grab painkillers or a real ice pack or something, but William grabs his sleeve before he can.

“The trainers said it looks worse than it is,” William says, holding Kyle where he is. “I’m okay, this happens. Just sit with me.”

And it’s certainly not _okay_ , but William’s looking up at Kyle, entreating, and he doesn’t ask much, so Kyle can’t begrudge him this. He sits back down, scoots his chair a little closer.

“Can I-” Kyle asks, and William’s eyes flicker to his, searching, before he nods. His fingers tighten where he’s holding up his shirt, almost imperceptibly as Kyle reaches out and touches his side, pressing lightly to make sure nothing’s broken. He doesn’t let himself be hesitant about it — this is purely functional, the warmth of William’s skin something to be acknowledged and dismissed — but it’s not lost on Kyle that locked away in the parts of his mind he still can’t remember, they’ve done this before, he’s touched William like this before. More than this, of course, but- Kyle wonders if this was something they used to do as well, William getting hurt and Kyle fussing. It’s an oddly intimate thing to think of.

William is staring at Kyle’s hand on him with this wistful little smile. Kyle knows that look.

“What am I supposed to be remembering?” he asks.

William blinks at him, clearly not getting it. “What?”

“You’re doing the face,” Kyle explains. It’s a very particular face. Most of William’s are. “The one where I’m missing some inside joke we had, or- what?”

“Not really a joke,” William says, but he’s avoiding Kyle’s gaze, now, nearly bashful, which is unusual enough to be intriguing. William has worn Uggs with a custom velvet tracksuit, in public — Kyle’s been operating under the pretty reasonable assumption that he’s shameless.

“What is it, then?” Kyle asks, curious. “If not a joke?”

William looks up at the ceiling, then down at his feet. Then both again, and then he sighs, chews his lip. “I bruise really easily,” he says, almost tentatively.

“…Okay,” Kyle says, because, yes, William, he has eyes.

William wiggles a little in his chair, looks like he doesn’t know whether to laugh or blush. “I usually ask,” he elaborates, and Kyle frowns, not following. William sighs again. “You know, for you to, like- to leave marks, when we-”

“ _Oh_ my god,” Kyle says, once it clicks, pulling his hand away from William’s skin like he got scalded, and they split the reactions between them, William bursting into uncontrollable giggles while Kyle feels himself going bright red. Which, fine, sure _he’s_ laughing, he didn’t just find out apropos of nothing that he’s apparently fond of leaving hickies and god knows what other sex-related marks on his- his former- on the person he was secretly sleeping with.

And then, entirely without his permission, Kyle’s mind is supplying all these images — imagined, he thinks, but tinged with something half-remembered — of William laid out under him, his sounds shaking and overwhelmed as Kyle presses his lips to William’s jaw, down his chest; as Kyle lingers and listens to William’s breath catch at the feeling of teeth, at the promise of something visible, proprietary, something he’d have to make excuses for in the locker room, and Kyle feels damn near dizzy with it, then, whatever _it_ is, some combination of possessiveness and arousal and other completely and deeply misguided things. Inappropriate things to be thinking, to even be _thinking_ about thinking with regards to William Nylander.

“I-”

“Don’t say sorry.” William cuts Kyle’s apology off before it’s out.

“I am,” Kyle says anyways, and he means it, but William shakes his head.

“I like it,” William insists, and his cheeks are still pink from laughing but he doesn’t look embarrassed, just speaks plainly, like this is a thing they can speak about. “it’s like- proof. For me. I get off about it.”

Kyle Does Not allow himself to think about that even a little. He’s terrible. He’s officially terrible.

William breathes a laugh. “Now you’re doing the face.”

It takes effort for Kyle not to try and duck away. “What face?”

“The guilty face,” William says. “The one you get every time you get reminded that we’ve had sex.”

Kyle takes off his glasses, polishes them on his shirt just to do something. To avoid seeing. He feels William watching him anyways. “Can you blame me?” is what Kyle asks, once it’s clear that William’s not going to be the first to speak.

“We had this argument before,” William says, and it’s not withdrawn — he doesn’t do withdrawn, not well, at least — but it is cautious, both of them clearly still remembering half-yelling at each other in Kyle’s office.

It feels as foreign as any of the memories Kyle’s forgotten. He remembers it, sure, but it’s almost nonsensical, now, the idea of speaking to William that way, of thinking that sharpness would be any way to get through to him. The idea of finding him a brat and not much else.

“It wasn’t-” Kyle starts, then re-evaluates, because he wants to say this right. “I feel like you think that me objecting to the-” He casts around for the word. “To the ethics of this, the relationship we had, is me casting some kind of doubt on your maturity, and it’s not.”

He scratches his nail along the countertop. “I was living alone and halfway to GMing the Greyhounds when I was nineteen,” he says. “It’s not about what a nineteen year-old can or can’t decide to do, absolute age isn’t anything, it’s- the difference. I’m a decade older than you, and my job puts me in a position of power, relatively, and that’s not good. Not as a reflection on you, but of me, and the person I want to be, it’s not… good.” He looks at William, holds his gaze. “I don’t like what it says about me.”

William doesn’t look away. Doesn’t look cowed by anything Kyle said, just tilts his head and asks, “Is it better or worse that I’m a guy?”

It’s not the question Kyle was expecting. “I don’t know,” he says. “That’s not…” He trails off.

 _That’s not the issue_ , he was going to say.

It would have been a lie. Part of one, at least.

It’s not something he has an answer to, not something that can be broken down into any sort of sensical components. Kyle’s tried. It’s- he’s intimately familiar with what hockey demands of its people, and with everything ugly underneath friendly catchphrases and rainbow stick tape for one night a year. Easier not to dwell on it, to distance himself from it by prefacing ‘bisexual’ with adverbs and qualifiers and reasons why it doesn’t really matter.

He doesn’t know what any of this makes him.

William has been quiet as Kyle’s thinking, to the extent that it’s audible when a droplet of water, melted off the bag of frozen mangos still clutched to his side, plinks onto the floor. Kyle stares at the tiny puddle it makes on the tile, looks back up at William and finds him already looking back. He looks thoughtful.

“Do you remember the first time you kissed me?” he asks. No pretenses.

Kyle wasn’t looking for a counterargument. “We don’t have to-”

“Do you?”

Kyle shakes his head.

William smooths down the crumpled fabric of his t-shirt, tells it like a story. “I was with the Leafs,” he says. “You were with the Marlies.” Kyle opens his mouth to argue, because he can’t give weight to technicalities just to feel better about his morals, but William doesn’t stop.

“You weren’t in charge of me,” he continues. “I’d hardly even see you around the rink anymore, and I hated it, so I’d find all these excuses to text you about articles or books, at first, and then just about anything at all.” The corner of his mouth tilts up, this smile like he can’t help it. “You mentioned something about me being your friend, once, and I, like- I screenshotted it, and I would look at it all the time. I liked being your friend, so much.” He shrugs a shoulder. “And then I went to a Marlies game one night and we talked the whole time, hours, and then we got coffee and kept talking, and then, when we were walking back to our cars, I said ‘kiss me’ and you listened.”

William shrugs again, just slight, like _there, you see?_ Aloof and earnest at the same time, the distinctive way he has. “When I ask you to mark me up, you listen,” he says. “You always listen to me.”

And they’re just looking at each other, maybe a foot apart in the kitchen. Maybe not even. Kyle can’t remember taking a breath since William started talking.

“It’s not fucked up,” William says, like it’s simple. It is, to him. “It’s not any of the bad things you think it is. We just like each other.”

That simple.

Kyle swallows, and William shifts in his seat, looks precisely his age for the first time in a long time. He glances down, says, self-deprecating, “I mean, even though I know that’s hard for you to imagine-”

“It’s not,” Kyle says, honest without intending to be, and when William lifts his eyes it’s like it lifts the rest of him too, tangibly, with something like hope. Kyle’s hit with such a wave of fondness it threatens to knock him off balance.

He just- he likes William, as a person. As his friend. That simple.

The silence isn’t constricting, isn’t awkward — they’re looking at each other, the moment spiralling out, and then the silence is nearly anticipatory, waiting, and Kyle can’t tell which of them is making it that way. Their knees bump together.

Kyle’s seat screeches as he pushes it back and stands up, fast.

“I’m getting you Advil and a hot pad,” he says, voice maybe a tad on the stiff side of normal, but he’s always been a good liar. “I’d advise against trying to stop me, I’ve been informed I’m a worrier, so.”

William just nods, scoots his stool in so Kyle can head past him in the restricted space, and Kyle doesn’t let himself glance back. It’s not until he’s got the cupboard above the sink open, his face safely hidden by the door, that he lets himself exhale and blinks, hard. He flexes his hand, feels like he can still feel the warmth of William’s knee on his. Doesn’t know what the hell he’s meant to do with the strange and not-wholly unpleasant twisting in his stomach.

“Did you read about the latest nonsense the Conservatives are trying with the campaign ads?” he asks, to fill the silence.

“You know I haven’t,” William says, and when Kyle works up the nerve to peer over at him, he’s got his chin in his hands and his elbows on the table, eager to listen.

“Right, you don’t vote.”

“You forgot?” William asks, grinning like he already knows the answer.

“Just tried to block it out, actually,” Kyle says, playing along, relieved to sink into something less weighty. “Better for my conscience if I can pretend my players have any sense of social responsibility.”

“Smart idea, GM,” William says, eyes crinkled the way they get when he’s smiling for real. “Tell me about the ad thing.”

So Kyle does.

\---

Kyle doesn’t believe in jinxes, really, but it’s still a knock on wood kind of thing, when his life starts feeling familiar. He can’t tell if it’s because of the gradual return of his memories, or just the fact that he’s been here long enough to start making new ones.

A disproportionate amount of his memories, the lost and found ones and the new ones, involve William, and Kyle can’t make himself regret that. He’s at Kyle’s apartment just about every day, any pretense of texting or knocking before coming in long abandoned. Any time not spent rewatching six years’ worth of sports or dissecting the previous night’s game, they’re busy prepping for the big upcoming charity event, with Kyle drafting and redrafting his speech and William racking his brain to remember Kyle’s opinions on ownership and fundraisers and the food they serve there. Kyle suspects that some of William’s own opinions on the quality of food provided by MLSE sneak in there, and then he knows for a fact that William’s opinions about formal wear are making an appearance, once they get onto the topic of what to wear.

“I’m not wearing a hot pink tie,” Kyle says, sitting cross-legged on his bed while William goes through his closet. “Not ever.”

“I wore one and it looked great, though,” William says, with this winning smile like he thinks he’s being convincing.

“I’m not _you_ ,” Kyle says, unconvinced, because William could wear literally anything and look flawless, and Kyle’s seen his own high school yearbook photos too many times to entertain any illusions about his own looks.

“No one is me,” William says cheerily, and Kyle only holds off on laughing long enough to flip him off and enjoy the deeply scandalized look on William’s face. It’s fun messing with him, getting to see cracks in the always-mild, vaguely head-in-the-clouds façade he puts up a lot of the time. He laughs when Kyle does, his whole face lighting up with it.

“You’re in a good mood,” Sheldon informs Kyle the next day, when they’ve taken over one of the conference rooms with printouts of potential callups and scrawled out lineup ideas to prep for playoffs.

Kyle takes a sip of his coffee, scrubs with his sleeve at the ring it leaves on the nearest stack of paper. “I’d argue that a positive attitude at the managerial level is a good thing in terms of organizational performance and morale.”

“Positive attitude, you like lineup planning that much?” Sheldon chirps good-naturedly. Kyle’s phone, a foot away on the table, lights up with a text. William.

Kyle snatches it off the table and puts it on silent; knows even as he does that Sheldon saw.

“You were saying about goaltending,” he tries anyways, and Sheldon doesn’t give him the out, staring more seriously than before. Kyle doesn’t wince. It takes effort. “Whatever you’re going to say, please don’t,” Kyle says.

Sheldon looks at him, hard. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” is all he says.

“I’m doing what’s best for the team,” Kyle says, and- and he’s not lying, that’s the premise behind this whole thing and there’s nothing _to_ lie about, regardless of what Sheldon’s implying. Kyle’s not- everything he’s doing is for hockey. Everything he has been doing since he woke up.

He knows his priorities. Proves it to himself, or tries to, by staying at the offices ‘til near midnight the next couple of nights, brushing William off with texts about being busy, taking the opportunity to catch up on his never ending to-do list. He spends most of Friday talking out contract details with agents, sits through the Sens game that’s tied at zero ‘til midway through the third. Finally calls Meg after the game, making his way down the halls toward the parking garage, satisfied with a productive week.

“She’s ninety years old, why would you buy her snowshoes?”

“She wants them!” Meg protests. “You’re going to tell a ninety year old woman she can’t have the birthday present she wants?”

“Oh my god,” Kyle says, despairing at once again being the only actual responsible adult in his family; he’s vaguely aware of hearing voices as he rounds the corner, still doesn’t expect what he sees when he does.

William is there, crouched down so he’s at eye-level with a little girl in a Nylander jersey. The kid’s tiny, an IV trailing behind her that marks her as one of the visitors from Sick Kids, and it’s awful to see, the way it always is, but the look on her face is purely, brilliantly happy as she chatters at William and he nods along, listening real intently.

“-and my baby sister’s hair is the same colour as yours!” she tells him, and William does this exaggerated expression of amazement.

“Oh my gosh,” he says, gentle enough that Kyle feels like his breath is getting punched out of him. “You know what, Olivia, all _my_ baby sisters have the same hair colour as me, too!” He holds his hand out for a high five, and the little girl giggles as she touches her palm to his, immediately dwarfed by him. William sits down right on the ground, crossing his legs and getting comfy to continue the conversation, still damp from his postgame shower in just in shorts and his underarmour.

Kyle retreats back around the corner, leans his head against the wall. He knew William was kind — hell, he’s been the object of it, because willingly being around Kyle at his worst is either kindness or masochism — but to see him, entirely unaware of being watched, no self-consciousness at all-

“Oh my god, Kyle, you can’t just stop answering because Gramma wants skis-”

Kyle jumps, startled. Megan. He was on the phone. Right.

“I- sorry,” he says, and then his brain catches up to the rest of him. “Wait, no, sorry, what, it’s _skis_ , now?”

He goes the long way back to his car. Sits there in the front seat, once Megan hangs up, for a long time, trying to get his thoughts straight and not really succeeding at all.

 _Priorities, Kyle_ , he reminds himself; but when William texts to tell him he’s on his way over, Kyle doesn’t tell him not to come.

\---

Any part of Kyle that managed to forget that he works for a billion dollar corporation is forcefully reminded on the night of the annual charity gala — MLSE, for all of its flaws and tendencies to lie on social media about GM memory loss, knows how to throw a party.

He has to stop and take in the scene when he arrives at the banquet hall. The whole place is decorated in blue and white, silvery accents set off by the soft lighting. There’s a live band off in a corner, playing something jaunty and vaguely jazzy. Waiters with trays of drinks or appetizers weaving between tables and groups of people socializing.

And it’s not like Kyle’s looking for anyone in particular, but it still feels like a kind of relief when William catches his eye from across the room and gives Kyle a little wave from within a group of people Kyle doesn’t recognize, presumably donors. He looks exactly as good as he always done, effortlessly handsome in his glasses and a navy suit that sets off his eyes even from where Kyle’s standing.

Kyle waves back — a GM kind of wave, he reminds himself, because tonight of all nights is when boundaries are important — then has to catch his balance as someone approaches from behind him and claps him so hard between the shoulderblades that he nearly trips over his feet.

“Can’t say my expectations were high, but you’ve outdone yourself this year, son,” the newcomer says in a booming, obnoxiously loud voice.

“Mr. Bradley,” Kyle recognizes him at once, partly by the assholery and the ‘son’ thing and partly by William snorting a laugh into his champagne glass from across the hall. He pastes on his best and absolute fakest smile. “How are you doing?”

And one conversation fades into another from there, an alternating stream of rich Leafs fans and important MLSE board members, all of whom have well-wishes and barely-hidden requests for gossip about Kyle’s accident, but none of whom look suspicious about Kyle’s memory. All of the preparation that he and William put in is paying off: Kyle recognizes faces, finds that people feel familiar based off what William told him. He was right about every single one.

He gets summoned up on stage to give his speech after the meal, and feels himself going into the same survival mode he felt his first day back at work, the same way he used to feel before winging a presentation back in school. No PowerPoint this time, at least.

Kyle stands behind the podium, lifts a hand to acknowledge the applause, and lets himself fix his glasses precisely once, because fidgeting isn’t a good way to project confidence and tonight is a ‘fake it ‘til you make it’ kind of night if there’s ever been one.

“Thanks, Brendan,” he says, for the introduction. “Sorry for the late start, everyone, had to catch the bus.”

And it takes a moment, like people aren’t sure they’re allowed to laugh at Kyle’s icebreaker about getting hit by a bus, but then the quiet breaks and everyone’s smiling, the elephant in the room safely addressed.

It goes well, Kyle thinks. Kyle hopes. He’s only half aware of what he’s saying, relying on practice and instinct to have drilled it into him, but the couple of minutes pass quickly, and he gets enough applause at the end, plus an approving thumbs up from Shanny, that he’s confident the fundraising part of the night will go as needed.

This time, heart still beating fast with the residual nerves of being in front of a crowd, Kyle doesn’t bother lying to himself: he looks around the room, finds what he’s looking for in the form of William seated at a table. William’s already looking at Kyle, and once their eyes meet, he nods his head, gesturing toward the double doors at the back of the hall before saying something to the woman next to him and getting to his feet.

It takes Kyle longer than it should to make it out of the banquet hall, waylaid by handshakes and hellos. When he finally does get to the hall outside, the band is playing again, something calmer this time. Kyle peers around. William’s nowhere in sight.

“Psst,” he hears, and has to do a double take when he sees William’s head poking out from inside the coat check.

“Come on,” William beckons.

Kyle raises an eyebrow. “The coat check, really?”

“We’re being sneaky,” William informs him proudly, then disappears into the coats again. Kyle stares, slightly despairing and more endeared than he cares to admit — he thought they were really good at the secret dating thing, but if they made a habit of sneaking off to make out in coat closets at team events, they apparently weren’t — and then, when voices start coming toward him down the hall, thinks, fuck it, and darts into the coatroom after William.

It’s cramped, the two of them pressed in between rows and rows of coats and furs and scarves, all the noise of the party muffled into a dull hum. William backs up to make room for Kyle.

“The speech was okay, right?” Kyle asks, mostly without planning to, and William’s nodding before he’s even done.

“It was so smart and good.”

“I feel like it was good,” Kyle says, half to himself, running through his speech in his mind and trying to process. “They laughed where I wanted them to laugh, mostly, like we planned.”

“Kyle, you- did- awesome-” William announces, punctuating himself by punching Kyle a bunch of times, playful.

“ _We_ ,” Kyle corrects, but gently, swatting William’s fists away and grinning the whole time, letting himself relax for the first time all evening. “ _We_ did, I wouldn’t have had a clue what to say to these people without you.” And they’re both smiling, half-laughing, but Kyle tries to sound like he means this, because he does. “Thank you, William. Sincerely.”

William looks pleased at the praise, his smile softening into something smaller and infinitely more personal. “You’re welcome,” he says, after a moment, and it sounds nearly formal, if only for the split second until his smirk is back, the distinctly bratty one that Kyle used to find annoying. “Want to know how to pay it back?”

“Oh, _that’s_ what this was about?” Kyle asks, teasing, and now he’s the one who shoves playfully at William’s chest. “You know, sometimes people just do nice things as non-reciprocal-”

“You can pay me back,” William continues, catching Kyle’s hands and hanging on and looking up at him so earnestly Kyle knows before he even speaks that he’s going to say yes to whatever he asks. “By ditching with me and buying me _tacos_.”

Kyle pulls back, not enough to tug his hands out of William’s grip, just enough to really get a look at him for the first time since getting pulled into the coat closet — William’s glasses are ever-so-slightly skewed on his face, his cheeks flushed prettily, and he’s moving more clumsy than usual.

“You’re _drunk_ -drunk, huh?” Kyle realizes bemusedly.

“You’re not drunk enough,” William retorts, and then he’s the one to let go of Kyle, only so he can reach up and boop Kyle’s nose, lowering his voice to nearly a whisper, “I might _die_ if I don’t get tacos, Kyle.”

“Probably not literally,” Kyle says, scrunching up his nose — he’s not a fan of being booped, it’s undignified — and apparently the resultant facial expression is enough to set William off into another fit of giggles, which in turn sends him swaying into the rows of hanging coats so that Kyle has to catch him by the arms to steady him.

“Shh, quiet, quiet-” Kyle shushes, but his own laughter bubbles out in spite of his best efforts to stop it, half at William and half at the sheer ridiculousness of the situation. He’s here in his dream job surrounded by the people he’s been trying to impress since middle school, and he _has_ impressed them, pretty thoroughly, and the happiest he’s felt all night is happening in the coat check, whisper-laughing like teenagers trying to sneak out of a chaperoned dance.

“ _Kyle_ ,” William pleads. “Tacos, come _on_.”

“This is such terrible decision making,” Kyle says, and William’s drunk but not drunk enough not to hear the yes in that, and he actually cheers out loud until Kyle claps a hand over his mouth, laughing all over again.

The best part of the open bar is that no one pays even a whiff of attention to the two of them making their escape. Kyle puts on his own coat, grabs one that he’s at least eighty percent sure is William’s — if it’s not, everyone in attendance can afford the mistake — and helps William into it. William wraps his scarf high without being told to, that uniquely Maple Leafs brand of muscle memory to avoid getting recognized every time they go out in Toronto.

Outside, the noise of the gala swapped for the noise of the city, it’s freezing out. Kyle’s breath appears in little puffs, and there are big, powdery snowflakes drifting down at a leisurely pace, starting to bury the election signs plastered every few feet. He shoves his hands in his jacket pockets to stay warm, peers over at William while they walk.

“You’re warm enough?”

“Mhm,” William hums, contentedly enough. He’s got his face turned up to the sky, nose pink from the wind. If there’s any benefit to the brisk air, it’s that it’s sobered him up at least a little; enough that, when he meets Kyle’s eyes, it’s entirely lucid. Maybe a bit unsure. “You didn’t have to leave, if you didn’t want to.”

Kyle’s shaking his head almost before he’s done talking. “I wanted to,” he says, and it’s not even a lie, but if it was, the relief on William’s face would make it worth it. “It’s not the fun kind of party, it’s- not that it’s not _fun_ , but, you know. It’s work.”

“I know,” William says, and they stop to wait to cross a street, so he sticks his tongue out to catch snowflakes. Kyle ducks his head to hide a smile. Not _that_ sobered up, then.

“Is it worth it at all?” Kyle asks; then, when William looks at him questioningly, tongue still out, “Catching the snowflakes. When I used to do it, it was always kind of disappointing.”

“Well, what do you expect, it’s snow,” William says, very knowingly, and the crossing signal changes so Kyle trails him down the street.

“Slush by tomorrow,” Kyle says. It’s his least favourite part of the city, the way a snowfall turns into brown mush within hours. Not exactly picturesque.

“Snow now,” William says. Not an argument, really. Just.

They fall into single-file so a family can pass them on the sidewalk. William stops, waits for Kyle to get next to him again before continuing walking.

“I’m happy it’s done for this year,” he announces; then, at Kyle’s questioning look, clarifies, “The party. I mean, it’s fun, but like-” He tilts his head, obviously thinking. “My head is buzzing the whole time, you know?”

“What, with the drinks?”

“No,” William says, frowning just a little. “No, with people, they all want to give me numbers and they’re always _touching_.” He nearly trips over a crack in the sidewalk, and Kyle steadies him. “There’s like, five people ever that my head is really quiet around, otherwise I’m just- wondering.”

He doesn’t specify what, exactly, he’s wondering. Kyle understands anyways. He’s a cynic at heart and always has been, questioning people’s motivations as easy as breathing, but William’s not like that — he’s trusting by nature. He’s _good_. Worrying about what people want from him is something he’s had to learn by necessity, and the realization bothers Kyle more than he expected it to.

He’s still got his hand on William’s elbow where he reached to catch him, and William turns into his grip. Their eyes meet, and something about it, the snow drifting down, the space between them, rings a bell.

“We’ve done this date,” Kyle realizes. “Walking downtown, at night, in winter, we’ve- this was a thing for us, right?”

William’s brilliant smile answers the question for him. “That first night, yeah.” And Kyle remembers it in slivers, that first time they kissed after the Marlies game, some hazy memory of teasing William about his mittens as they walked back to their cars, hesitant to let the night end, to break the spell.

“I liked talking with you,” Kyle told him, entirely sincere and clumsier than he’d usually be; and he remembers the look William gave him as he said that, the kind of look that meant he was deciding something, always the braver of the two of them.

Kyle can remember it, clear as anything, the snowflakes dotted on William’s eyelashes as he peered up at Kyle and said, no pretenses, “Kiss me.”

“Do you remember?” William asks, now. Still blinking against the snow.

“I… think so?” Kyle says, mind racing, clinging to the half-remembered moments. “Maybe?” He’s careful about it, should maybe be more careful, because it’s not fair to raise William’s expectations of him remembering more than he does, but William just beams, content.

“Good,” he says, decisive, as they turn the corner. “That’s really good.”

“I got something better,” Kyle says, and nods past William, further down the street they’ve just turned onto. It’s busy, even as dark and cold as it is, a few dozen people skating on the outdoor rink or taking pictures with the lights or lining up at the row of food trucks, shawarma and sushi and hot dogs and then, right at the end of the block, this garishly-coloured truck with a giant taco on the side.

William fist pumps, _Breakfast Club_ style, and Kyle’s not even done laughing at him before he’s getting tugged along by the sleeve of his coat.

It’s nice, the stress of the evening melting away for good, replaced by this warm, flickering sort of feeling in his chest as they join the line, as they huddle close to look at the menu and Kyle stalls ordering while William basks in the heat from the grill. They don’t linger, leaving before anyone can recognize William, bickering all the way home over who gets to carry the bag and leech off the warmth of the food. That also doesn’t linger — the bag isn’t particularly warm by the time they’re back at Kyle’s place, but it still smells amazing, especially after a night of canapes and pretentious-ass foods that Kyle had to pretend to like.

Kyle toes off his dress shoes, handing the bag to William, who’s already dumped his jacket and scarf right on the floor. “Go sit, I’ll get drinks.”

“Yes, boss,” William does this little mock-salute, and Kyle rolls his eyes, kicks at his ankles as they head for the kitchen. He makes his way to the fridge, doubling over to choose from his selection of craft beers. When he has, grabbing the bottles in one hand and shutting the fridge with the other, he’s met with the sight of William next to an open cupboard, triumphantly attempting to open a bottle of whiskey.

“Help yourself, bud,” Kyle says, amused, and William takes him at face value, keeps trying to open the bottle.

“We’re celebrating,” he announces, presumably by way of explanation. “You’re remembering more, and I’m _so_ good at hockey, and we’re celebrating.”

“You said that part,” Kyle says, but he’s grinning as he puts down the beers and holds out his hand for William to pass him the bottle. His motor control isn’t as shot as William’s — he gets it open without much trouble, examines the label and comes to the conclusion that either it was a gift or NHL GM Kyle suddenly enjoys spending half his paycheque on ludicrously expensive booze.

He pours them both glasses while William opens up the food, sneaking bites like he thinks Kyle won’t notice. When Kyle slides him his glass across the counter, he takes a sip, testing, then grins and waggles his eyebrows at Kyle. “I’m going show you how to actually drink, Dubas.”

“You’ve never gone to a frat party, _I’ll_ show _you_ how to drink, Nylander,” Kyle retorts, only half joking, and William cackles as they clink their glasses.

And Kyle believes pretty firmly that, as a lifelong learner, he can extract something useful out of any situation. From this situation, he learns that whiskey and food truck tacos are a truly, deeply godawful combination that starts tasting a whole lot less awful once they’re a couple glasses in and Kyle’s taste buds stop having anything resembling a sense of discernment. And it’s the two of them drinking in Kyle’s apartment, certainly nothing close to a frat party, but Kyle still catches up to William pretty quick in the tipsiness department, and then maybe a little past that.

It feels _good_. He can’t remember the last time he just let himself relax, no conditions, no worrying about what he’s forgetting. Everything he needs to remember is in front of him, tonight. Just simple.

Kyle plays with the neck of the beer he’s been nursing since they switched from whiskey. It’s dangling from his hand as he lays stretched out in his armchair, legs hanging over one of the sides.

“And so, like,” he’s saying, enthusiastically, because he had a point, somewhere, a really good one, involving some well-made graphs and rock solid logic. “If you really think about it, right, until we have some kind of rink-by-rink standardization in place for how we track players and pucks, any kind of expected goals model based on shot location is just- it’s wrong, it’s just going to be flat-out wrong, or at least inconsistent.”

William hums a sound that’s probably supposed to be acknowledgement. Maybe just humming. He’s lying on the floor, semi-upside-down with his legs propped up on the couch and his suit jacket long since abandoned. He’s entirely rumpled, his tie loosened and shirt borderline-indecently unbuttoned. Still somehow manages to look like he’s doing it intentionally.

“And don’t even get me started on trying to make any kind of shot location model on junior rinks,” Kyle continues, because he’s just very passionate about reflexive thinking when it comes to effectively using spatial data. “ _That_ is just- oh, you’re getting up.”

“Music,” William says, the most focused he’s looked in ages. “I want music.”

Kyle yawns, goes back to constructing arguments in his head about puck tracking in non-NHL arenas and only half pays attention to William flipping through Kyle’s stacks of LPs. He searches really thoroughly until he finally finds one he likes, tosses the sleeve over his shoulder — Kyle doesn’t bother scolding him about it — and fitting the record onto the player, lowering the needle.

There are a few seconds of crackling, then the room fills with music, loud and deeply obnoxious. Upbeat. Pretty good, atmosphere-wise, for whiskey and tacos.

“Nice choice,” Kyle says, appreciative.

William grins over his shoulder at Kyle, crooked. “Yeah, if you’re a thirty-year-old hipster.”

“I’m not a hipster,” Kyle informs him, watching with something between wariness and anticipation as William crosses the room to stand in front of his armchair. His brain is too slow to argue well, but he tries. “Hipster implies contrived aesthetics and a man bun.”

William reaches down and steals Kyle’s glasses right off his face, puts them on and says, in this completely exaggerated stoner voice, “I just feel like the Toronto indie music scene collectively has an authenticity that isn’t there in a lot of mainstream artists, you know?”

Kyle gets to his feet, mostly steady, sets his beer down on the coffee table and snatches his glasses back. Tries and doesn’t quite manage to sound stern. “That is not what I sound like,” he says; then, in the interest of fairness, “And, _and_ the Toronto indie music scene _is_ really good, it doesn’t make me a hipster for noticing that.”

William laughs, this sunshine-y, glossy thing, and grabs Kyle’s hand. “Come on,” he says, tugging Kyle toward the only open part of the floor. His intentions are immediately obvious.

“We’re not dancing,” Kyle says planting his feet. He’s not under any illusions about his coordination, drunk or otherwise.

“I know, you’re really bad at it,” William agrees without even having the courtesy to hesitate, and then, while Kyle looks on, incredulous, he starts shimmying, this odd, completely unembarrassed little dance. He meets Kyle’s eyes, raises his eyebrows all expectantly.

“Spontaneous dance parties are music video bullshit, just so you know,” Kyle informs him.

“Hipster,” William stage-whispers, and it’s a terrible comeback, objectively, but he doesn’t stop dancing, just keeps doing these increasingly goofy moves and teetering unsteadily until Kyle can’t help but smile and relents — _barely_ — nodding his head to the rhythm of the song.

He’s fully confident that he looks like an idiot.

“Yeah!” William crows, overjoyed.

Kyle’s heart does something probably complicated and definitely embarrassing. Worth looking like an idiot, for that look on William’s face, for how close he is, stubble darkening the lines of his jaw. Kyle could reach up and trace the curve of it.

“There was this paper,” Kyle says, to say something. “They, uh- they mathematically modelled hipsters and showed how their desire to not conform actually made them conform more, in the end. They mentioned it in this primer on Bayesian statistics.”

William hums, moving loose and clumsy. “I definitely know what those are.”

“It’s a school of thought,” Kyle says, and doesn’t know what it says about him, how relieved he feels, sinking into explaining something. This is safe territory. “Bayesian stuff has better predictive power because it considers prior probability. If x then what’s the probability of y, that kind of thing.”

“So,” William says, thoughtful, and he looks up at Kyle from under his eyelashes, and the safe territory goes scorched earth under Kyle’s feet. “So, if I kissed you first, what’s the probability of you kissing back?”

And Kyle is hyperaware of the space between them, charged like an electric field. His hands are lingering at William’s hips, not-quite touching, and it’s like all at once he doesn’t know where to look because everything is so much all at once, the broad span of William’s shoulders, the plush pink of his lips, the way his collarbone disappears under his t-shirt, this mix of features that shouldn’t go together but do, and they’re tipsy, they both are, but that seems increasingly unimportant because the space between them is nothing and getting smaller by the second, one of William’s hands coming to rest on Kyle’s chest, over his heart, and his fingers tighten in Kyle’s shirt, grasping as he leans up.

“Will,” Kyle says, and it takes every muscle in his body, every ounce of willpower he’s ever once had and taken for granted to make himself pull away, to put space back between them. “We’re both…” Only then-

Then, somehow, William is smiling.

“What?” Kyle asks, and William shakes his head, still beaming ear-to-ear.

“You said Will, not William,” he says, and he’s got this light in his eyes, looking up at Kyle the same way he did that first night, like Kyle’s been gone and isn’t, anymore. “You called me Will again. Probability’s not zero.”

“Not zero doesn’t mean good odds,” Kyle argues, fairly lamely, his heart still hammering in his chest.

“I don’t know enough about numbers to care about the odds,” William says, and Kyle can’t remember when he stopped finding the blind self-confidence thing annoying and started finding it endearing, but he does, he _does._ William’s still grinning like he maybe knows that. “Don’t worry, I won’t kiss you tonight,” he says.

“I’m not worried,” Kyle lies. Doesn’t lie? Doesn’t know.

“You’re _terrified_ , Kyle Dubas,” William says, with entirely too much relish, and goes back to dancing, singing along to himself and closing his eyes and leaving a perfectly respectable amount of space between himself and Kyle.

And Kyle-

He lets out a breath.

He’s so fucking out of his depth. He never, ever feels that. Never lets himself.

Does, anyways, tonight.

\---

The effect of that night, aside from Kyle waking up to the most torturous hangover in human history — he’s made abundantly aware of how very, painfully much he is not an undergrad anymore — is that he dispenses with the idea of ever being anything resembling an authority figure in William’s eyes. It’s not- it isn’t some wholesale change, because it’s not as though they’ve exactly been the model for workplace propriety even since Kyle woke up, but they’re on equal footing, and that can’t help but feel like a good thing.

“ _Why_ did you let me do this the day before press stuff?” William groans, fresh out of Kyle’s shower and looking only slightly less hungover than Kyle. It’s sort of refreshing, knowing he’s human. Still irritatingly perfect-looking.

Kyle hands William a mango smoothie he mostly sleepwalked through making. “Talk… quieter,” he requests, head pounding, and William is blissfully quiet as he chugs his breakfast, which gives Kyle ample opportunity to notice that William’s currently wearing one of Kyle’s sweaters, which, if nothing else, distracts Kyle from his headache and also from anything resembling coherent thought.

He doesn’t let it make things weird. Ill-advised drunken dance parties aside, things are good for the first time in Kyle’s recent memory, and he’s not going to fuck with that.

He’s remembering more and more and faster, and it’s almost more frustrating than when he didn’t remember anything at all, because now the gaps are more noticeable, glaring, empty spaces in a half-drawn picture.

“What if this is as much as I ever remember?” Kyle asks at his next appointment. He’s trying not to sound overly desperate. Doesn’t think he succeeds.

“It’s a possibility you need to be prepared to live with, Kyle,” the doctor says, kind, and Kyle takes his glasses off to rub at his eyes, because the thing about living with it-

It’s not _enough._

He’s at home that night, empty takeout containers and balled-up napkins scattered on the coffee table, the light from the TV the only thing making them visible. They’ve been saving this game, the last of the Raptors’ championship run, catching up slowly with William providing commentary on the games, usually along the lines of ‘oh, the guys were at that game, they wouldn’t shut up about it’.

Kyle’s leaning forward in his seat, completely engrossed in the game. It’s ridiculous being this tense, he knows what happens, but it’s just so _inspiring_ , watching the team play like a well-oiled machine, watching the city lose its collective mind, knowing all the hours and months and years of work that went into it.

The clock ticks down, the buzzer goes, and as the Raptors of a couple years ago storm the court, cheering, Kyle pumps his fist in the air, out of his seat.

“Fuck, I love sports,” he says, decisive, and then he catches himself; looks over at William, who made a valiant effort to get through Game Six, but, exhausted after three games in four days, all of them with travel, passed out sometime during the third quarter.

Kyle was worried about waking him, but William’s still asleep, curled up on his side of the couch, his glasses sliding down his nose. The sight makes Kyle stop in his tracks. He remembers Will napping like this before games, passing out while Kyle stayed up to watch the late game. He tries to push at the memory, to get more, but it stays wispy, fleeting.

Kyle walks to the linen closet, careful to avoid the loud floorboard, and brings a blanket back to the living room, unfolds it over William. William sighs in his sleep and nestles in under the blanket, and Kyle can’t not smile at the sight, and then he doesn’t know what to do with this overwhelming wave of- of _longing_ , is what it is, that hits like a ton of rocks.

He was such an idiot. It’s obvious, now, his copy of _The Art of War_ long since reshelved, any hope of making William Nylander think he’s near when he’s far or vice versa long done; and how could it not be, really, when the byproduct of nearness has been months of William meeting Kyle’s every move with a steady stream of affection, straightforward and stubbornly unwavering. The kind of thing Kyle convinced himself didn’t exist, that maybe objectively shouldn’t exist, in the face of their jobs and the NHL and every relationship Kyle’s seen end.

And that’s the trouble, right, the problem with the whole idea of living with it, of accepting that this is the most he’s ever going to remember, because William doesn’t deserve that, to have Kyle one foot in the past.

Kyle makes it to his room, crawls into his bed and looks over at the bedside table where William’s glasses were, at the throw blanket folded over on the dresser, and for the first time that he can remember, feels painfully conscious of the emptiness of the bed, the sense of _missingness_ urgent like a lost limb. He _feels_ it, then, acutely and urgently, the alienation of having six years taken away from him, of wanting those years and everything they mean back.

They were good together, Kyle’s certain of it.

“Remember,” Kyle orders himself, and he tries not to sound like he’s begging, does anyways and feels embarrassed about it and doesn’t stop. He squeezes his eyes closed, tries to force his brain to cooperate. “Just remember. You have to remember.”

 _Remember_ , he thinks. _Don’t go away from me,_ he said, in Switzerland.

“Come on,” he wills himself, and keeps willing himself all night. “Remember.”

\---

It’s a surprise, but a pleasant one, when William stops by Kyle’s office before Thursday’s game. They don’t spend as much time together, here, residual habits or simply deferring to the relative comfort and privacy of Kyle’s apartment.

“Hey,” Kyle says, pleased to see him. He closes the tabs he’s got open, gets a split-second glimpse of his cityscape screensaver before shutting his laptop. “You’re usually napping now.”

“I’ll get a few minutes on one of the massage tables,” William waves him off, shutting the door behind him. “You’re busy?”

“Normal amounts of busy,” Kyle shrugs, and watches William stretch out on his couch, hands behind his head.

“My family’s visiting,” he announces, clearly the reason for the off-hours visit. “Next week, when we play Alex. They’ll all be here.”

Kyle runs through what he knows of William’s family in his mind — four siblings, a brother and a father who play or played pro. They’re close, it’s been evident from the way William speaks about them.

“That’s good, right?” Kyle asks, and William nods.

“Yes.” He talks through a yawn, so Kyle almost misses it when he says, casual, “They’ll want you to come with us for dinner. My mom has been worrying.”

It takes Kyle a moment to process that. “They knew about us?” he asks, thrown.

“I don’t keep secrets from my family, Kyle,” William says, and throws Kyle off all over again with the seriousness of it. This is important to him. They are. “Will you come for dinner?”

“I,” Kyle starts, and then he hesitates, because the family thing is- unprecedented. Not- he’s met the families of people he’s dated, of course he has, and he’s good at it, too, being charming for old people, but he and William are… Kyle doesn’t know exactly what they are, now, but they’re not boyfriends, and Kyle’s certainly never had enough of a relationship with a man to meet his family, and he has no idea how or if that would affect the dynamic.

 _You agreed to meet them before_ , he reminds himself, and William’s looking over at him, not so much expectant as hopeful, and Kyle’s just hopeless now, apparently, because he nods and says, “Of course I will.”

William smiles, bright, and yep, Kyle’s definitely hopeless. Hopeless about making William happy, hopeless about pretending to be productive, because Will ends up taking his gameday nap on the couch in Kyle’s office, and Kyle ends up listening to the rhythm of his breathing and trying to convince himself that this isn’t a massive mistake.

He doesn’t get scared of people. That’s a fundamental prerequisite of his job, is not allowing himself to be intimidated by people older or more important or more knowledgeable than him, and he’s good at that part of his job, too, and none of that explains why Kyle, a few days later, finds himself standing in front of his closet stressing about what’s appropriate to wear.

He’s nervous. Doesn’t know what to expect from the Nylanders, because William’s been insisting that his family liked Kyle, but if he’s been speaking to them all along, telling them how Kyle was being an asshole right after the accident, Kyle wouldn’t blame them for being skeptical. Not to mention the reality of the fact that Kyle’s a decade older than William and also his boss, which sounds like a direct prescription for parental hatred if Kyle’s ever heard one.

Kyle puts on a tie and takes it off about a dozen times before walking into the restaurant William texted him the address for; ends up going tie-less and feels like he made the right call when none of the Nylanders have one either.

William comes to the front of the place to greet him, to bring him back to the private dining room they’ve arranged. It’s the sort of nonchalantly extravagant thing that Kyle supposes becomes standard procedure when three of the family are generationally wealthy. He’s not used to that, maybe will never be, and maybe that’s why he makes an idiot of himself right away when, after being mobbed by all of William’s siblings, he goes to shake hands with William’s father, who clasps Kyle’s hand with a thin-mouthed smile. “Kyle.”

“Hi, sir,” Kyle says, and sounds approximately fucking fourteen years old when he does it.

William and his brother burst out laughing, and his dad’s smile gets slightly more real, and Kyle can feel his face reddening as William’s mother steps forward to hug him.

“If you call me Ma’am, I will take offense, Kyle,” she teases gently, looking uncannily like her son. Same tendency for directness, as well. “Do you remember us?”

“I,” Kyle starts, wanting to be able to give the affirmative; then, when all he can muster up are wispy memories of saying hello while William Facetimed them, of passive aggressive contract discussions with her husband, “A little. I’m sorry.”

William grabs the crook of Kyle’s arm, tugging him over to the table before the silence can become too oppressive. He saved a spot for Kyle next to his own, and Kyle’s probably too relieved at that, at the feeling of having some kind of an ally next to him.

His fears were for nothing, probably: the conversation flows easily as the food and drinks arrive, and Kyle’s pleased to learn that, private restaurant rentals aside, the Nylanders are mostly a normal family. A loving one as well, that much is immediately evident, chirping each other with this easy affection that Kyle’s seen in William before, but never this openly. It’s this wholesome sort of parent-kid closeness that Kyle used to talk himself out of being jealous about when he was little and sleeping in the room at his grandparents’ place that they said was his but everyone knew was just the guest room until Kyle and his sisters got dumped there.

And- cool, cool, he’s been at family dinner for half an hour and his childhood abandonment issues are flaring up. Super chill and normal.

William’s pinky brushes up against Kyle’s under the table, then overlaps it. Kyle relaxes his shoulders.

He didn’t survive as a functional GM in spite of severe amnesia for nothing: Kyle’s been good at talking to people his whole life, and he manages it now, makes it through the rest of dinner and even gets a few smiles, mostly from William’s younger sisters. It’s sweet, watching them all together. Will glances at Kyle for confirmation that he’ll be alright on his own, then, once he gets it, scoots his chair over to the other end of the table so he can talk to them better. He looks older than usual, more mature as he’s teasing them, obviously fond and maybe also a little protective when the eldest one starts talking about some boy back home. It reminds Kyle of his own conversations with his sisters, this sense of recognition that he’s come to associate with William. They’re not that different, sometimes. In some ways.

Slowly, Kyle becomes aware of William’s father’s eyes on him.

“He’s good with them,” Kyle says, conversational.

“He always has been,” Michael agrees, and he says it pleasantly enough, but there’s a heaviness to it when he meets Kyle’s eyes, and he’s speaking more quietly than before, only for Kyle’s ears, when he asks, “Will you do something for me?”

“If I can, of course,” Kyle says, and Michael doesn’t drop his gaze.

“Let him go.”

Kyle’s been practicing controlling his reactions since he was a teenager. He still reacts to this, instinctively recoiling. “I-” He shakes his head, quick, tries to school his expression. “I don’t follow.”

Michael Nylander asks, “Are you and William together?” and, for the second time in as many seconds, Kyle’s left without any good response.

The response is no. The response should be no.

He can’t make himself say it.

Michael sighs, like Kyle’s silence answered his question. “William is certain about you, and I trust my son enough to believe him,” Michael says, not unkindly, still speaking low. “And I’m not blaming you, of course, you didn’t mean to forget, but you did. You didn’t get to choose him.”

He looks Kyle dead on, same piercing eyes as his son with none of the softness there. and any argument Kyle had vanishes. “If you aren’t certain that you want him, don’t lead him on. For his sake.”

And he’s staring expectantly, doesn’t look away until Kyle nods, a jerked, tiny motion. There’s a burst of laughter from William’s end of the table, the girls squealing as he and Alex try to elbow each other out of their chairs.

Kyle can’t breathe.

The rest of the evening is a blur. Kyle’s fairly certain that he does a good job of exchanging polite goodbyes, of avoiding pitying looks from Michael. William’s leaving with his family, but he lingers behind as they file out, stands across from Kyle in the empty room.

“Thank you for doing this,” he says, eyes soft.

Kyle swallows around the lump in his throat. “Don’t.”

William looks bemused. “Don’t what?”

“Thank me.”

“Too late,” William says, stubborn and playful and positively impish, when he rocks on his heels. Kyle doesn’t kiss him and wants to, shoves his hands in his pockets and keeps them there when William bumps up against him before leaving, some almost-approximation of a hug.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” William says, like a promise.

Kyle watches him go; gets home and, for the first time since college, screams into a pillow.

The part of him that argues with people for a living is furious — how dare Michael Nylander act like he gets to tell Kyle what to do, Kyle doesn’t get told what to do — and the other, infinitely more cowardly part, is miserable because he knows he doesn’t have any compelling argument to prove William’s father wrong.

Kyle knows that he and William were dating. Knows that they aren’t, currently. Knows that, in spite of his best efforts to convince both of them otherwise, the boundaries between those two states have become increasingly muddied, love and war and hockey and any kind of order to Kyle’s life gone to shit because he didn’t remember to look before crossing the street six months ago.

Kyle defaults to mental models, because that’s what works, that’s how to be objective and not let feelings cloud his judgement. Occam’s razor, simplest answer is best: life would be less complicated for both of them if they did a clean break, if Kyle let him go the way Michael told him to. Kyle could focus on his job, and William could get over him and find someone nicer and more accessible and able to remember the first six years of their mutual acquaintance.

But then- the point of Occam’s razor isn’t simplicity for simplicity’s sake, it’s limiting assumptions, and it’s assumptive to the point of delusion to think that William would let Kyle go, that Kyle would be selfless enough to make him when every fiber of his being is screaming for him to do the exact opposite.

William’s his _friend_. Not just his friend, obviously, but god, Kyle just likes him so much, the way he can talk and listen and enjoy both the same, the way he’s smarter than he lets on and in a completely opposite way than Kyle, the way he’s maybe the only person Kyle’s ever met who’s better at showing people only the parts of him he wants them to see than Kyle himself. He loves that way that William likes reassurance, physical or verbal or just being in the same place, and doesn’t make any secret of it; the way he incorporated himself into Kyle’s life and carved himself a place there, a complementary brand of offbeat humour and sarcasm-as-affection that rivals Kyle’s own.

Kyle wants, more than anything, to do right. By William, of course, but by everything else that’s demanding it of him as well. And he tries — he makes himself available to the team, emphasizes wellness and players as people. He encourages community outreach, even voted early to avoid tomorrow’s election rush. He tries to call his Gramma twice a week.

He’s clinging onto the presence of William Nylander, even when he’s some sad approximation of the person that William fell for. That William deserves. Because as much as Kyle wants to do right, he’s selfish, he’s fundamentally obsessive and selfish and mistrustful even when he tries not to be, and in the context of hockey management those traits are useful, even desirable, but in the rest of his life they make him the kind of person to lash out when a forgotten boyfriend showed up at his apartment and kissed him, the kind of person to fly to Switzerland and have a yelling match instead of being able to admit that he’s hopelessly gone for William Nylander.

Kyle’s so sick of hurting him.

_Let him go._

He can’t.

He has to.

Kyle yells into his pillow again. It doesn’t really help.

\---

Spring announces its arrival with two days straight of rain, torrential downpour that washes away any lingering snow and just about everything else as well.

The drops are hammering on Kyle’s window as he sits in his office; they make a nice excuse for why he accomplishes nothing of significance all day, except for drafting and discarding no fewer than twelve different ‘here’s why you’re better off without me’ speeches to William that all sound like ‘I might never remember you properly and you deserve infinitely better than that’ and, relatedly, are all utter trash.

He just needs to do it. He just needs to grow up and stop hoping for something he shouldn’t want and-

He crumples up the latest draft and throws it at the wall. It skitters along the ground before stopping short of the trash can.

Kyle only realizes he forgot his umbrella upstairs when he makes it to the main foyer at the end of the day; he’s about to head back up when he sees the camera crew. They’re set up on the far side of the room, focused on Auston and John as people that Kyle recognizes from the PR department ask them questions, presumably for some fun segment for commercial breaks. A few feet away, Mitch and Morgan are lounging around in street clothes, clearly waiting for their turn.

They see Kyle come out of the elevators, and Morgan waves before he can hide, so he makes his way over.

“Enjoying the day off?” he asks, trying to be upbeat, because his own personal shit shouldn’t get in the way of being an effective leader of people and all that, and he almost manages it, except for that he happens to glance down at Morgan’s shirt.

Kyle frowns.

Mo follows his gaze to the round ‘I voted’ sticker on his shirt. “They didn’t give you one?”

“No,” Kyle says, after a second. “No, I voted last week, they…” He trails off, busy looking at anyone else in his sightline. Mitch has a matching sticker, and John, and every other Canadian citizen in the room. Kyle shakes his head like he’s trying to clear water out of his ears. “Sorry, I didn’t know you guys followed politics.” He’s tried bringing it up with the rest of management, figuring out how to get a roomful of rich white men in a sport that actively despises the concept of progressive thinking to care about civic responsibility. He’s usually talked down from trying.

“Oh, yeah,” Mitch says, tapping his sticker all proud of himself. “I did a bunch of online quizzes to know who to vote for, ‘cause Willy made us all go earlier.”

Kyle’s breath comes out like he got punched.

Will made them vote. Kyle mostly thought he was being tuned out every time he mentioned politics, gave it up as a battle not worth having, and the whole time, William was paying attention.

Kyle doesn’t know if he wants to laugh or cry.

Of course, he was paying attention.

Fuck Occam’s razor, he thinks, and he’s not consciously aware of making a decision, but he must, because he hears Mo calling after him, “Uh, you alright?”, but Kyle’s already halfway out the doors.

He’s soaked to the skin within minutes of being outside, but he doesn’t head for the parking garage, doesn’t try to flag down a taxi, just walks. No one tries to stop him, heads down or hidden under raincoats and umbrellas, and Kyle pushes past them, not quite at a run, but close, and he has no idea where he’s going until he’s there at the front door.

The door opens for his key, and he hits the elevator button for the eighth floor without thinking about it, knocks at the door at the end of the hall and is standing in a puddle, his hair sopping wet and dripping down into his face by the time William opens the door.

“Kyle,” William says, and he looks genuinely happy to see Kyle. He always does. “You never visit, how did you remember where I live-”

“You got the team to vote?” Kyle asks, and the question feels bigger than it is.

“Oh,” William says, blinking sort of surprised, but he rolls with it. “You know. It’s important, right?”

He always, always listens.

Kyle doesn’t let himself second guess, not anymore; he gets a hand on William’s jaw, tilts his chin up, and kisses him.

It’s nothing like the kiss from before, fresh out of the hospital and unmoored in a life he didn’t recognize. This time, Kyle fits his mouth to William’s like he knows it innately, the same way he knew where to walk, to get to him. It’s nothing especially sauve — William’s hands flutter, startled, before landing on Kyle’s waist, and he’s gentle about it, his touch feather-light and so tentative it aches, even as his lips part under Kyle’s, eager.

When Kyle pulls back, William’s eyes are wide, his skin damp from where Kyle was soaked with rain and touched him.

“Sorry,” Kyle says, and he means for the rain, for the kiss, for forgetting him and hurting him and being selfish enough to need him all over again anyways. Kyle couldn’t deserve him in a hundred years.

“I’m not,” William says, and he catches Kyle’s wrist before he can pull away, catches him off guard with the fierceness of his voice. It doesn’t stay that way, the fierceness gone before it really even sinks in, because that’s not Will, not really — it fades into earnestness, no hiding at all.

“Don’t,” William says. “You can be here however you need, just- don’t go away from me again.”

And his voice breaks as he finishes, and that’s- it’s _him,_ trusting and asking and everything Kyle’s not, and Kyle can’t do a fucking thing except kiss him with this torn out sound that gets muffled against William’s lips and then, for once, Kyle stops thinking.

William’s an easy person to kiss, matching what Kyle gives him and clutching him closer, hungrily, because it’s not just sex, it’s never been just sex, with them, but _fuck_ has Kyle been wanting this anyways, his world narrowed down to William’s mouth, his tongue, his fingers digging into Kyle’s hips. There’s thunder rumbling somewhere far away as they make their way blindly inside the apartment; and it’s fitting, Kyle thinks, somewhere still aware of his surroundings, that the walls around them should be trembling while this is happening.

They reach what Kyle assumes is the bedroom; even if it’s not, William’s lifting his arms so Kyle can tug his t-shirt over his head, so it’ll have to do. It messes up his hair, once his shirt’s off, and he looks tousled and devastating and Kyle can’t give that the attention it deserves because every ounce of his attention is focused on William’s body, because-

He’s beautiful. Objectively, William’s beautiful, gorgeous in the same vaguely surreal way as people on magazine covers or in paintings, only better because he’s here and tangible and gets goosebumps when Kyle runs his hand down his chest, down the almost-invisibly blonde trail of hair across his abs. That in itself gives Kyle a kind of thrill, how distinctly masculine it is, like he’s twenty-one and just figuring out what it means to be bisexual and making out with a guy for the first time, something new and exciting that Kyle wants to memorize.

It’s so easy, touching him, more logical than Kyle expected, and the realization makes him falter, just for a moment.

He’s absolutely certain that William can feel his heart hammering as he unbuttons Kyle’s shirt, but William’s kind enough not to mention it, or maybe just too focused on getting rid of the rest of their clothes, and Kyle’s not going to argue there, no chance of that. He pushes, testing, once William’s naked in front of him, and William goes easily, landing on the bed and tugging Kyle down for more kissing, getting his legs around him, and then Kyle’s propped up over him and peering down and-

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he admits, blunt.

He doesn’t like not knowing, the insecurity that comes with it. Giving someone else the upper hand.

William reaches up, touches Kyle’s cheek. Brings him back. “It’s okay,” Will says, and gives this little grin, like they’re just sitting joking around on Kyle’s couch, like this is normal. This was normal, for them.

Kyle laughs, or tries to, and it comes out this weird, breathlessly stressed kind of thing.

William leans up to nudge their noses together. “It’s _okay_ ,” he repeats, firm, and Kyle squeezes his eyes shut, leaves their foreheads pressed close.

“Kiss me,” he says, and William does, no hesitation, and the rain keeps pouring down outside, and Kyle figures out just how quick of a learner he can be. There’s something to be said, he decides, for the resilience of muscle memory.

\---

Kyle doesn’t move for a long time after he wakes up.

William’s asleep, still, curled into Kyle with his hair falling into his face, the edges glowing soft, nearly white in the sun. The ends flutter every time he exhales. He doesn’t stir when Kyle finally extracts himself from the tangled sheets to get up, just stays snoring softly as Kyle pulls on his boxers and tiptoes out of the room.

He explores Will’s apartment silently, taking stock of what he sees, making sense of his surroundings. The hallway is lined with framed jerseys all the way down, a variety of Nylanders with different teams and numbers, a Backstrom tre kronor. A Kapanen Marlies jersey with a scrawled permanent marker message and smiley face taking up most of the white in the numbers.

The main room is open, lots of natural light. Kyle takes his time, lingering at each photograph on the walls. There’s one of William’s family. A team photo of the Leafs, one of Team Sweden with gold medals around their necks.

The only wall without pictures is entirely occupied by a massive TV, with multiple video game consoles attached and a huge stack of games sitting on the floor. A few cozy-looking throw blankets flung on the couches. Nearly messy, but not quite. The whole place is like that, uncluttered to the point of being almost impersonal, except for those little interjections of a past — the jerseys, the pictures. The kind of things that could be packed up and moved without too much trouble.

Kyle wanders to the big window, looks out at the stillness of the lake, at buildings and tiny, blurry cars poking out of the fog, and has to do a double take.

He recognizes this view. He’s been looking at it for months, every time he opened his laptop.

Something slots into place inside of Kyle, this crystal kind of clarity he’s been missing for months.

William’s apartment feels like an extension of him. A safe place, important not for the place itself but for what’s in it; the sort of place where what’s in it — or _who’s_ in it — was important enough to Kyle that he'd take a picture of the view out the window, a reminder that only he’d recognize.

They both know home is people. They’re different in a million ways, but the same in that one.

The floorboards creak in the hall, and Kyle turns to watch William pad into the room.

There’s a certain intimacy to it that manages to feel unexpected, even after last night. William’s hair is sleep-rumpled, Kyle’s probably not much better. Both of them are in their boxers, neither wearing their glasses. William comes close enough that he’s mostly in focus anyways.

For a few moments, they’re both quiet. William slips his hand into Kyle’s.

“Do you magically remember everything now?” he asks.

Kyle shakes his head. Doesn’t pull his hand away.

William doesn’t look disappointed. Doesn’t look angry. He’s just looking at Kyle the way he always has, like he trusts him implicitly, like he wants to _see_. “You kissed me anyways,” he says, a question.

“Significantly more than kissing,” Kyle says, and he doesn’t mean to be pedantic, but William looks fond anyways.

“Don’t overthink,” he says.

“I’m not,” Kyle says; then, when Will shoots him a look, “I’m _not_.”

He toys with William’s fingers, absently, as he thinks out loud. “I’m just- adjusting my perspective.”

“Explain,” William asks, and Kyle traces the curve of his thumbnail.

“I feel like- I have this compulsive need to codify attraction, right, which I think is a fairly standard human thing, only the thing about that is it relies on having some kind of perception of normal, some kind of categories into which to fit things, and you- the categories that I had, that I remember having, you don’t fit there.”

He bites his tongue, trying to make sense of it. “But I want you to fit somewhere, even if it’s strange to reconcile with this idea of myself from six years ago that I still have in my head, or with the idea that you’d deal with me all this time, even when I had no idea who you were, and I was scared and lashing out and frankly terrified by the idea of you- sorry, by the way, for that-”

William’s shaking his head, cuts Kyle off mid-ramble. “I’d do it again.”

“I know,” Kyle says, and he squeezes William’s hand, can’t not laugh, helplessly. “I know, you have the absolute worst sense of self-preservation, and that’s why it’s so unfair to you that I’m asking you to be with me again, properly, because-”

“You are?” William asks, and, right, that would’ve been a good thing to start with. Still bad at emotions, Dubas.

“Yes,” Kyle says, opting for earnestness over eloquence since, apparently, that ship has already sailed. “I don’t remember everything. I don’t know if I ever will. But I remember enough. I know enough, I know _you_ enough to know that I loved you.” He laces their fingers, absolutely no intention of letting go. “That I love you, present tense. All tenses. I know that.”

William’s laugh, when it comes, after a moment, is choked up, a little bit disbelieving. His eyes are shining, and he’s squeezing Kyle’s hand so, so tight — as Kyle watches, William lifts their joined hands, holding onto Kyle’s in both of his, and presses a kiss to Kyle’s knuckles.

It’s a funny little gesture, out of left field in the sweetness of it.

“What?” Kyle asks, endeared beyond hope and also slightly wary, because he didn’t think his confession of feelings was _that_ good. “Did I- what did I say?”

William holds Kyle’s hand to his chest, stepping closer, and laughs again, still almost giddy, like he can’t believe what’s happening. “Kyle?”

“Will.”

“Guess what,” William says, smiling so big it’s like staring into the sun. “Guess what, we never said ‘I love you’ before.”

Kyle’s mouth drops open.

“Oh… my god,” Kyle says, mortified and blushing and possibly on the verge of melting into the floor and dying. He thought- the way William acted, he just assumed- “We- what? Never?”

William shakes his head, still beaming.

“Ah,” Kyle says, then nods, stupidly, and tries to recover a shred of his dignity. “Well. Shit.”

William gets into Kyle’s space, presses a kiss to his neck, then to the bottom of his jaw, as Kyle looks up at the ceiling. “I love you back,” he stage-whispers, goofy, and Kyle sighs, tries not to sound blatantly adoring and fails miserably.

“I mean, yes, I figured,” Kyle says, still a little put out by being the first one to say it, and he then proceeds to get literally knocked off of his feet by William springing into his arms to kiss him properly. They stumble backwards into the window, the glass cold against Kyle’s back and William exactly the opposite at his front, and, on second thought, Kyle can live with being the first one to say it, if this is the end result.

He nips at William’s bottom lip, thrills in the breathy sound that the hint of teeth elicits from William — Kyle remembers what he said about enjoying the roughness of getting marked up, and he has _plans_ — and then reaches up to tuck William’s hair behind his ear, impossibly fond. “You dated me for three years without me saying I love you?” he asks, the truth of it still dawning on him slowly.

Will shrugs. “I figured,” he echoes, and pats Kyle’s chest like, _there, there,_ not a hint of irony _._ “Besides, you’re kind of high-maintenance.” He stands on his toes to press a kiss to Kyle’s nose. “Can you make us breakfast now?”

Kyle’s the luckiest person in the entire world.

He bursts out laughing, shoves William off of him, playful, and heads for the kitchen, knows that William will be right behind him.

They can work with this, Kyle thinks. Blank spots or not, remembered or not, this- he knows this like it’s part of him, and he’s not letting go, not ever again.

**Author's Note:**

> not to include a bibliography for a fanfiction but:   
>  \- the hipster math paper https://arxiv.org/abs/1410.8001    
>  \- https://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/leafs-hire-dubas-wise-beyond-his-years/ 


End file.
